TURKEY IN REVOLUTION 



BOOKS ON TURKEY AND THE BALKANS. 



THE BALKANS— ROUMANIA, BULGARIA, SERVIA 
AND MONTENEGRO. With a New Chapter con- 
taining their History from 1896 to 1908, and New 
Illustrations. By William Miller, M.A., Associate 
of the British Schools at Athens and Rome. (" Story 
of the Nations.") Large crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. 

TURKEY. With a New Chapter on Recent 
Events. By Stanley Lane-Poole, M.A., Litt.D., 
late Professor of Arabic in the University of Dublin. 
(" Story of the Nations.") Large crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. 

WASHED BY FOUR SEAS. An English Officer's 
Travels in the IVJear East. By H. C. Woods, 
F.R.G.S. , formerly of the Grenadier Guards. With an 
Introduction by Sir Martin Conway, 66 Photographs 
and a Map. Demy Svo, cloth, 7s. 6d. net. 



LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN. 



I 



Photo by] 



OLD AND NEW. 



U'Aiglc. 



A procession of voters, going to record their votes, is crossing the Galata Bridge, a floating bridge 
with a surface of uneven planks. In the background is the Valideh Mosque. 

[Frontisfiece. 



TURKEY 

IN REVOLUTION 



BY 

CHARLES RODEN BUXTON 



WITH 33 ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP 



T. FISHER UNWIN 
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE 
LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20 
1909 




1 



[All rights reserved.] 



TO THE 

OTTOMAN COMMITTEE OF UNION AND PROGRESS 
A TRIBUTE OF ADMIRATION 



( 



I 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTION . . . . . -13 
PART I 

CHAPTER 

I. THE SULTAN AS REVOLUTIONIST . . 23 

II. THE OLD MACEDONIA . . . -33 

III. SOWING THE SEED . 41 

IV. THE TWENTY-FOURTH OF JULY . . -55 

V. A REVOLUTIONARY PLAY . . . 75 



PART II 

VI. THE FIRST IMPRESSION . . . . 85 

VII. WHAT LIBERTY MEANS . . . . IOI 

VIII. PERSONALITIES . . . . , II3 

IX. THE COMMITTEE OF UNION AND PROGRESS . I27 

X. YOUNG TURK POLICY . . . .139 

XI. ABDUL HAMID . . . . 151 

7 



Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XII. THE SHEIKH-UL-ISLAM . . . . 1 67 

XIII. THE ELECTIONS . . . 1 85 

XIV. THE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT . . 195 

XV. THE DEPUTIES AT WORK . . . 207 

xvi. Europe's welcome . . . .217 

XVII. WAR-CLOUDS , . . . .227 

PART III 

XVIII. THE WISE AND PRUDENT .... 239 

XIX. PROSPECTS . . . . . 2 57 
XX. IN THE CRIMEAN CEMETERY . . .269 

INDEX . . . . . 283 



8 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Map of European Turkey and the Balkan States 

Old and New . . . . Frontispiece 

A procession of voters, going to record their votes, is crossing 
the Galata Bridge, a floating bridge with a surface of uneven 
planks, across the Golden Horn from Galata to Stamboul. In 
the background is the Valideh Mosque. (Photo L'Aigle.) 

FACING PAGE 

The Sultan's Favourites . . . . 25 

Taken from a rough broadsheet sold in the streets of Con- 
stantinople after the Revolution. The Lion of Liberty is facing 
a hydra-headed monster, the heads representing the various 
Palace favourites who really controlled the government in the 
old days — the famous " Palace Gang." 

Justice and Police under the Sultan's Govern- 
ment . . . . . .28 

The Police School. From the Kalem, or The Pen. This paper, 
from which I reproduce several cartoons, is one of the happiest 
literary products of the Turkish Revolution. The picture 
represents the incapacity and injustice of the old regime. 

Salonica . . . . . . -35 

The White Tower. On my visit in 1907, a Bulgarian had just 
been hanged here, and his body exposed to public view for 
three days. 

In the Streets of Monastir . . . . 38 

Bulgarians at a street corner. 

Salonica . . . . . . -41 

A general view over bright red roofs. Mosques in the distance. 

Monastir . . . . . .61 

The place where General Shemshi Pasha was shot, on entering his 
carriage to drive to Resna to suppress the incipient Revolution. 

Salonica . . . . . . .62 

(a) The quay, showing the White Tower in the distance. 

(b) The place where the transports arrived from Asia Minor, 

9 



List of Illustrations 

FACING PAGE 

carrying the troops which the Sultan hoped would be able to 
put down the revolutionary movement among the 3rd Army 
Corps in Macedonia. 

Salonica . . . . . -65 

The Gardens of the White Tower. From this place the 
telegram was despatched on July 23rd, 1908, conveying to 
the Sultan the ultimatum of the Committee of Union and 
Progress. It was here that the Committee met that night and 
awaited the Sultan's decision. 

Salonica . . . . . . 67 

Rejoicings after the grant of the Constitution. A procession of 
Bulgarians. 

The 24TH of July . . . . .68 

A picture postcard commemorating the grant of the Constitution, 
with a portrait of Enver Bey, and an inscription " Long live the 
Fatherland ! Long live the Nation ! Long live Freedom ! " 

Constantinople . . . . . -72 

Rejoicings after the grant of the Constitution. A procession 
through the streets of Pera. (Photo L'Aigle.) 

Constantinople. . . . . .89 

A procession of voters crossing the Galata Bridge. The Galata 
Tower crowns the hill to the left. (Photo L'Aigle.) 

An Official of the Old RAgime . . .106 

The Young Turks are presenting him with a bill for his pecula- 
tions and misdeeds. (From a broadsheet sold in the streets of 
Constantinople after the Revolution.) 

A Demonstration before the Office of the 

President of the Council . . .111 

From the steps a speech is being delivered on liberty, equality, 
and fraternity. (Photo L'Aigle.) 

Enver Bey in Salonica . . . .116 

He is crossing a square in front of a Greek restaurant. A snap- 
shot taken a few days after the Revolution. Like the other 
members of the Committee of Union and Progress, Enver Bey 
has refused to allow his photograph to be taken for sale, so that 
the picture possesses exceptional interest. He wears the khaki 
uniform which the Young Turk officers had agreed to adopt for 
the expected civil war. The flags in the background, and the 
seller of newspapers, are typical of the new state of affairs. 

Ahmed Riza Bey, first President of Chamber of Deputies 118 

For twenty-five years, as an exile in Paris, he laboured for the 
Young Turk cause. (By kind permission of the Editor of the 
Near East. ) 

10 



List of Illustrations 



FACING PAGE 

Maniassi Zadi Refik Bey, Minister of Justice . -125 

He is the only member of the Committee of Union and Progress 
who at present holds a Government portfolio. (By kind per- 
mission of the Editor of the Near East.) 

Fraternisation of Christian Priest and Moslem 

Hoja . . . . . .139 

From the Kalcm, where it was entitled " Panneau decoratif 
pour le Parlement." 

A "Manifestation" in the Streets of Pera . 143 

The procession is shown on its way to the British embassy to do 
honour to Great Britain in recognition of the support given to 
Young Turkey. (Photo L'Aigle.) 

The Sultan . . . . . .152 

He is alighting from his carriage at the door of the mosque, on 
the occasion of the weekly " churchgoing " or Selamlik. The 
photograph is unique, as it was taken on the first Friday after 
the grant of the Constitution, and since that day the photo- 
graphers have been excluded from the court of the mosque. It 
is the most life-like representation of the Sultan's features and 
attitude that I have seen. (Photo L'Aigle. ) 

The Mutiny Among the Palace Guards . . 155 

After the Revolution one of the first necessities was to replace 
the Palace Guards of the Sultan by regiments loyal to the Con- 
stitution. Some of the Guards, who were being sent away to 
the provinces, resisted the order to leave. They were promptly 
surrounded and overpowered. The picture shows the ring- 
leaders, in the centre of a square formed by the loyal troops 
from the Macedonian garrison, being addressed by Mukhtar 
Pasha, the commander of the 1st Army Corps, which garrisons 
Constantinople. They were afterwards led out and shot. (By 
kind permission of the Editor of the Illustrated London News.) 

The Selamlik . . . . . . 156 

The Sultan is shown driving down the hill from the Palace to 
the mosque, followed by a group of Court and other officials. 
Opposite him sits the Grand Vizier, Kiamil Pasha. Behind are 
the windows of the Palace, at which the Sultan sometimes 
appears to show himself to the people. Troops, four deep, line 
the road, and behind them is a motley crowd of sightseers, 
who would not have been admitted before the Revolution. 
(Photo L'Aigle.) 

The Balkan Committee's Delegates Received by 

the Sultan . . . . . 159 

The Sultan is shown addressing the delegates. The scene 
typifies the changed attitude of those who have formerly attacked 
the Sultan's government on grounds of humanity. As a result 
of the Revolution, he has become, for the present at least, the 
mere figure-head of a constitutional state. (By kind permission 
of the Editor of the Illustrated Lo>uion News.) 

II 



List of Illustrations 

FACING PAGE 

Fraternity . . . . . .172 

A Turkish mollak (in the centre) is shown sitting at the voting 
table with a Greek priest on his right and an Armenian priest 
on his left. Behind are two little girls bearing the emblem of 
the Constitution decorated with flowers ; in front is the ballot- 
box. The wall at the back is the facade of a Greek church. 
(Photo L'Aigle.) 

The Elections . . . . . .185 

A polling-place in the court of a mosque in Constantinople. 
The place is surrounded by soldiers. Each voter receives a large 
blank sheet of paper, writes on it the name of the candidate of 
his choice, and drops it in the ballot-box. They are voting for 
an "elector of the second degree." These "electors" subse- 
quently elect the deputies for the city. (Photo L'Aigle.) 

The Elections . . . . . .189 

A procession escorting the ballot-box, after the primary election 
(see the last picture), to the municipal buildings. The ballot- 
box is on the carriage in the background. (Photo L'Aigle.) 

The Opening of Parliament . . . . 195 

A scarlet flag, about 2 ft. square, of which thousands were sold 
on the day of the opening, December 17, 1908. The English 
reader will note its place of manufacture. It bears the date of 
the grant of the Constitution. 

Prince Saba-ed-din . . . . .212 

The brother-in-law of the Sultan, he has nevertheless lived in 
voluntary exile, in Paris, for the past ten years. He is the founder 
of the Union Liberale, which advocates a measure of local self- 
government, and claims to be more liberal than the Committee 
of Union and Progress. It may play an important part in 
Turkish politics. (By kind permission of the Editor of the 
Near East.) 

The Lifting of the War-clouds . . . 230 

This cartoon appeared in the Kalem when the prospects of peace 
with Austria and Bulgaria were brightening. It was called 
"The Lamentation of the Carrion- Crow." 

The Boycott of Austrian Goods . . . 235 

During the controversy with Austria, arising out of the annexa- 
tion of Bosnia, all Austrian goods were boycotted by the 
Turkish people. The picture shows the shop of Herr Stein, 
in Galata, where "pickets" were stationed to warn the public 
not to enter. (Photo L'Aigle.) 

The Boycott . . . . . .236 

The chief feature of the boycott was the refusal to buy red 
fezzes, most of which are made in Austria. The Kalem depicts 
the Emperor of Austria putting on a fez, in order to persuade 
his people to buy up the stock of fezzes which is lying unused 
in the Austrian factories. 



12 



INTRODUCTION 



IT fell to my lot to visit Turkey both shortly 
before and shortly after the Revolution. 
Like so many others, I had been deeply 
interested in Near Eastern affairs since the 
Macedonian rising of 1903 and the brutal 
suppression which followed it ; I had followed 
the efforts of England to introduce reform, and 
the attitude of the other great Powers of Europe. 
In the autumn of 1907, nine months before the 
grant of the Constitution, I had an opportunity 
of seeing for myself the condition of affairs in 
Constantinople, in Macedonia, and also in the 
liberated countries, Servia and Bulgaria. In 
Macedonia I was fortunate enough to visit the 
places which have lately been in every one's 
mouth — Salonica, Monastir, Fiorina, Ochrida, 
Resna. In 1908 came the Revolution. The 
situation was suddenly changed. There was 
good hope, at least, of a reform of Turkey from 
within. That would be the best possible solution 
of a problem which had sometimes seemed in- 

13 



Introduction 

soluble, except by war. The Balkan Committee, 
of which I had been a member since its founda- 
tion, welcomed the new regime and took active 
steps to make known the ideas of the Young 
Turks to the English public. As this Com- 
mittee, during the outburst of anti- English feeling 
which occurred in the autumn at Vienna, was 
credited with deep designs and almost super- 
human powers, it may be as well to say that its 
members, drawn from all political parties, were 
united by the sole object of improving the con- 
dition of the European subjects of Turkey, 
Moslem and Christian alike. It was ready to 
support, therefore, any policy of reform that 
seemed likely to prove effective, whether its 
authors were the Powers of Europe or the 
reformers of Turkey herself. Being aware 
of our objects, and appreciating our recent 
action, the Ottoman Committee of Union and 
Progress, which had brought about the Revolu- 
tion, invited us to send delegates to Constanti- 
nople, to make their acquaintance and to be 
present at the opening of the new Parliament. 
I was one of those who accepted the invitation. 
Our formal duty was to present an address of 
congratulation to the Committee, and a meeting 
was arranged for this purpose at the 6 cole 

14 



Introduction 



Civile, the Government school at which officials 
are trained. At the Committee's desire, we 
presented our respects to the constitutional 
Government which they had been the means of 
placing in power. We had the honour of being 
received by the Sultan and the Grand Vizier; 
while some of us had the advantage of an 
informal interview with the Sheikh-ul-Islam. 

When I left London I fancied that, beyond 
the formalities of a semi-official reception, we 
should have no dealings with the Young Turk 
leaders. I promised myself some weeks of 
delightful rambling and gazing and inquiring, 
of politics and history and art. But such was 
not the notion of the Committee. This was to 
be no ordinary visit. They were to become our 
friends, and we were to become theirs. We 
were to meet "everybody " ; we were to under- 
stand the Young Turks, their aims, their hopes. 
They would show us how they knew something 
of our ideas also ; how, even in the dark days, 
even when we were the bitterest enemies of their 
Government, they knew that our efforts were 
disinterested ; how, being unable to communicate 
with us, they had resolved to convince us, not 
by words but by deeds ; and how delighted they 
were that we should have helped to influence 

IS 



Introduction 

English opinion in their favour. It was an 
advantage to them to be able to show the public 
that they had enlisted the support of some of the 
most active enemies of the old regime. We 
were Englishmen, too, and had not all inter- 
course with the Englishman been prohibited till 
now, in spite of the fondness which the Turk 
had always felt for him ? And so it came about 
that we were no mere official guests, but 
whenever there was no formal business to be 
done we were together — clattering about hither 
and thither in little carriages through the rocky 
streets, now visiting a mosque with glowing old 
Christian mosaics, now an elementary school, 
now the office of the Shura-i- Ummet, the Com- 
mittee's newspaper, now the chambers where the 
Parliament had met in 1877. Or we were 
having lunch together at our hotel, or consuming 
a succession of indescribable Turkish dishes and 
sweetmeats in a dark little eating-house of 
Stamboul, or dining with the Mayor of the 
European quarter. Or we were watching a 
patriotic play together, our friends interpreting 
the sentiments, all of us thrilled with excitement 
at the successful tricks of the spies, the terrible 
court-martial, and the grand finale, with Enver 
Bey himself (who was sitting beside us all the 

16 



Introduction 



time) bursting on to the stage in the khaki 
uniform of the revolutionary troops, dealing out 
stern justice to the villains of the piece, and 
raising the glorious standard of the Constitution. 

And all the time we talked, talked in very 
imperfect French, talked of the things which 
four months before it was treason and sedition 
to speak of — the things which our friends had 
studied in secret, the ideas they had bottled up 
so long in their minds, unspoken ! We talked 
politics, and history, and economics, but above 
all politics — the politics of Turkey and of all the 
European countries, the supreme practical 
problem, reform, civilisation. 

In such intercourse we could not fail to learn 
many interesting facts about the authors of the 
Revolution and their policy. There was much 
indeed which had not yet found its way into 
print and could not be learnt from any other 
lips than theirs. At the same time it was 
obviously difficult to acquire exact knowledge 
on many points. Before the Revolution every- 
thing was carried on in secret, and as no member 
of the Committee was acquainted with more 
than four others at the most, none of them were 
in a position to describe its work as a whole. 
Nor has the veil, even yet, been altogether 

17 b 



Introduction 

lifted. This is partly due to the principles of 
the Committee itself, which prevent its members 
from making anything public that might glorify 
the achievement of some individuals at the ex- 
pense of others. After the Revolution, again, the 
government of Turkey, stable as it seemed, and 
in reality was, vis-a-vis the Powers of Europe, 
was in a state of flux. The time was one of 
transition. The Ministry was a provisional one. 
It was thought best to leave open all questions 
not demanding immediate solution until the 
meeting of the Parliament. Everything was 
changing and, though order was kept, intense 
excitement prevailed. 

The First Part of this book deals with the 
origin of the Revolution. It was necessary, 
before proceeding to the events which have 
recently filled the newspapers and interested 
the public, to recall some of the features of Old 
Turkey. It is only against that background that 
the new movement can be seen in its true 
colours. But I have not loaded the book with 
a detailed description. I have assumed a 
general knowledge, and merely described, under 
the name of "The Sultan as Revolutionist," those 
features of his rule which contributed directly to 
the revolutionary spirit. I have gone rather more 

18 



Introduction 



closely into the case of Macedonia, which I had 
visited so short a time before. Macedonia affected 
and interested Europe in an exceptional degree, 
having long provided an element of danger 
and uncertainty in the field of international 
policy. In Macedonia the seed of the Revolution 
was sown, and the organisation first took shape 
which was destined to subvert the Hamidian 
rule. This organisation was responsible for the 
exciting events which startled the world in the 
summer of 1908, and culminated in the grant of 
the Constitution on July 24th. The play which 
I mentioned above describes how the Constitu- 
tion was won, or, what is hardly less interesting, 
how the Turkish populace believe it was won ; 
and it throws some light on the opinions of the 
Young Turks about the Macedonian question 
during the pre-revolutionary period. I have 
thought it worth recording. 

The Second and longest Part contains what 
I saw and heard in Turkey during the period 
of ferment which followed the Revolution. The 
state of Constantinople presented at this time 
such extraordinary novelties, its picturesqueness 
appealed so much to the eye, and its strange 
contrasts awakened so many memories, that I 
have tried to reproduce the impression I received 

19 



Introduction 

on revisiting it, before the new information had 
begun to sort itself into pigeon-holes. I have 
then drawn attention to the actual effects of the 
Revolution, as distinguished from its prospects ; 
to show how much it has already achieved, and 
what "mere liberty, ,, as we sometimes con 
temptuously call it, really means. The person- 
alities of the Young Turk leaders, and of the 
prominent men in the Ministry, are described 
first, and this leads to an account of the position 
and conduct of the Committee of Union and 
Progress after their first and greatest object had 
been secured. In fact, though not in name, 
they controlled the government through the 
period of transition. All Europe was impressed 
by their statesmanlike qualities, which were 
chiefly based, I have ventured to suggest, on 
the moral character developed by their earlier 
efforts. Their policy, and that of the reforming 
Turks in general, was eagerly discussed and 
criticised at this time ; and it was closely con- 
nected with the vital question of the liberal 
movement in Mohammedanism, about which 
the Sheikh-ul- Islam talked to us very freely and 
emphatically. What I have to say of the 
position of the Sultan, both present and future, 
I have woven into an account of the Selamlik, 

20 



Introduction 



or weekly " church-going," and of the interview 
which he accorded to us. During these months 
the elections for the new Parliament were pro- 
ceeding all over the Empire. They would have 
attracted even more interest than they did, if 
they had not been conducted with such complete 
order and good humour. They culminated in 
the opening of the Parliament by the Sultan, 
a historic ceremony which I have described in 
some detail. This leads up to the subject of 
the Parliament itself, its composition, and such 
guesses as could be made at the time as to its 
probable grouping and action. There would 
have been enough of interest in such a picture 
if it had been confined to the internal affairs 
of Turkey. But the dawn of the Revolution 
was tempestuous. Austria, Bulgaria, and Greece 
expressed their welcome in a painfully violent 
form ; the whole question of the southern Slavs 
was suddenly raised ; long-standing ententes and 
alliances were threatened ; the leaders of Young 
Turkey were plunged at the outset into foreign 
difficulties ; and the constant danger of war 
overhung the first six months of the new regime. 
The whole picture is little more than a rough 
sketch of a movement in rapid progress. Such 
pictures may easily be distorted; but I hope I 



Introduction 



have provided facts enough to correct any rash 
conclusions which may have slipped in by the way. 

The last Part consists chiefly of reflexions. I 
am prepared for the charge that it is the dullest 
of the three ; some will think it unnecessary. 
I will only plead in justification that it includes 
the reflexions of others besides myself — men 
of much longer experience, and well qualified 
to speak from the point of view of students, 
diplomatists, merchants or financiers ; and that 
while it certainly contains material for criticism, 
it may also supply some food for thought. 
The anticipations of the best judges are part 
of the facts of the present situation. The 
returning traveller is always met by the query, 
"Will the new order be permanent?" It would 
be affectation not to attempt a reply. Lastly, 
no Englishman can prevent himself from looking 
back at the history of his country's relations 
with Turkey since the Crimean War, and 
speculating, if vaguely and inconsequently, about 
the future. 

I cannot write a final account of the Turkish 
Revolution ; but if my picture needs correcting, 
History will correct it. 



22 






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TURKEY in REVOLUTION 



PART I 



CHAPTER I 



THE SULTAN AS REVOLUTIONIST 

HEN the ultimatum, demanding the 



V V Constitution within twenty-four hours, 
reached the Palace, the favourites debated, it is 
said, as to who should announce the unwelcome 
news to His Majesty. At last one, bolder than 
the rest, entered the Imperial presence, carrying, 
as he thought, his life in his hand. To hrs 
astonishment, the Sultan replied that the news 
gave him great pleasure, as this was the object 
which he had laboured throughout his whole 
reign to achieve. And in a sense he was right. 
"The real author of the Revolution," I have 
heard it said more than once, "is Abdul Hamid." 

He came to the throne in August, 1876. The 
opening of his reign was marked by a tragic 




Turkey in Revolution 

failure abroad and a bitter disappointment at 
home. A Conference was summoned at Con- 
stantinople, as a result of various insurrections 
in European Turkey. To put the Powers off 
the scent, the Sultan granted a Constitution. 
Parliament opened in March, 1877. The Russian 
War, so disastrous for Turkey, began in April 
of the same year. The Parliament was closed, 
and finally suspended in February, 1878. After 
that ill-omened beginning, the Sultan's govern- 
ment went from bad to worse. The army of 
spies increased until it numbered more than 
forty thousand, and cost two millions a year. 
The Sultan became more and more ingenious 
in appealing, when political necessities required 
it, to anti-Christian fanaticism. This was the 
chief practical use of his claim to the position 
of Khalif, or leader of all the faithful. By 
playing on the rivalry of Christian nationalities, 
granting churches and bishoprics now to one 
and now to another, favouring the weaker until 
it became the stronger, and then exciting the 
animosity of its rival, he maintained a precarious 
equilibrium which kept him and his favourites 
in power. He encouraged robber Kurds or 
Albanians, whose military support was valuable, 
to enrich themselves at the expense of the 

24 



( 




The Sultan as Revolutionist 



peaceful and industrious. His system, regarded 
as a means of preserving autocracy, had only 
two drawbacks. One was that the railways 
and the telegraphs, without which he could not 
have consolidated his position, brought into the 
Empire a breath of Western civilisation and 
some inkling of Western methods. The other 
was that, while he cramped education, he failed 
to suppress it ; and among all thoughtful people 
the desire for it was only intensified b) the 
persecution. 

A mild tyranny would not have sufficed to 
provoke a docile and loyal people. But the 
Sultan's tyranny was not mild. At a moderate 
estimate, 10,000 persons have suffered death 
for purely political offences in the last thirty 
years, apart altogether from massacre and civil 
war. What was even more effective, the most 
intelligent and disinterested men have for years 
been exiled — not to remote steppes, where their 
influence would have been wasted, but to 
populous cities all over the provinces, where 
they have become centres for the propagation 
of liberal ideas. 

Men of independence and character might 
have sought compensation in quiet and obscurity. 
It was not permitted. The director of the 

25 



Turkey in Revolution 

museum had his books and papers seized and 
destroyed ; a remnant of them he sent to 
Europe, and now, since the Revolution, he has 
received them back — " two boxes full," as he 
exclaims with beaming face. His brother, an 
archaeologist, was forbidden to visit the royal 
archives and treasures. A professor of my 
acquaintance taught the principles of Free 
Trade ; he found himself suddenly removed 
from his post for speaking of " freedom." A 
lecturer on constitutional law was not allowed 
to pronounce the word " constitution." A dis- 
tinguished lawyer told me that he had written 
a book on the social life of Turkey ; fearing 
detection and possible persecution, he had burned 
the manuscript. An artist, who had studied 
painting in Paris eleven years ago, was forbidden 
to return — his dearest wish denied him. Any ^ 
association with foreigners was certain to lead 
to suspicion and espionage. An ambassador 
came to take his leave of a Turkish gentleman. 
M Many of my compatriots will be sorry to lose 
you," said the Turk. " I fear they will not," 
replied the ambassador ; " for, apart from the 
officials with whom I have had to come in con- 
tact, you are the only Turk I know." In 1901, 
all heads of families employing European tutors 

26 



The Sultan as Revolutionist 

or governesses were ordered to dismiss them. 
Three or four could not dine together without 
being 11 reported on." There was no end to 
the odious and often absurd activity of the 
Sultan's spies. Since the Revolution there has 
been published the text of a letter dated August 
ii, 1905, from one Vamik-Chukri Bey, an 
official in the Ministry of the Interior, who 
deems it his duty to draw his superiors' attention 
to a newspaper article on the Russo-Afghan 
War. The town of Khiva, he says, obviously 
stands for the celebrated reforming priest Chiva, 
and the defeated Afghans are in reality the 
Turks ! The evils of the old regime made 
quite as deep an impression upon the best of 
the Turks themselves as upon the Christians. 
Their feelings may be summed up by some 
lines from the chief poem of Tewfik Fikret 
Bey, a patriot who has lived to see the destruc- 
tion of the evils which he deplored in secret. 
The poem has been translated by Miss Jenkins, 
of the Home College at Scutari, in a metre 
which imitates the original couplets : — 

" O Fear, armed Fear, to whose swift downfall go 
From the widow and orphan each loud plaint of woe. . . . 
O laws but tradition, O Tyranny, 'neath 
Whose oppression no safety nor right but to breathe. 

27 



Turkey in Revolution 

O Justice, the courts have expelled thee for aye, 
Unredeemable promise, eternal lie. 
People, losing all power of emotion from fear, 
To you is aye stretched out Suspicion's long ear. 
O mouths dumbly locked by the fear of the spy, 
Popularity wide brings but Hate in full cry. 
To be Policy's slave, Sword and Pen, is your lot ; 
O great Moral Law, e'en thy visage forgot." 

The Sultan's rule was not merely malignant. 
It was stupid. Its favouritism became ridiculous. 
It sent ambassadors to the European capitals, 
or envoys to the Hague Conference, who could 
hardly read or write ; names might be mentioned, 
but it is useless to rake up the past. It was 
monstrously extravagant. A navy whose engines 
were thick with rust, and whose ships could 
not leave their moorings, was commanded by- 
seven thousand naval officers. The luxury of 
Yildiz Kiosk, and the swarm of new palaces 
which accommodated his favourites or imprisoned 
his possible rivals, drained away the scanty- 
resources of the State, while the potential wealth 
of its once fertile soil was left undeveloped. 
The old rdgime had only one merit : it was 
picturesque. There were, and perhaps there 
are, observers of such singular mental detach- 
ment that for this one virtue they forgave it 
all its sins. They loved the "Old Turk," the 

28 




JUSTICE AND POLICE UNDER THE SULTAN'S GOVERNMENT. [Kalem. 



Instructor. What is the Police ? 

Pupil. The instrument for the execution of Justice. 

Instructor. And what is Justice ? 

Pupil. The regular payment of the salaries of the Police.. 

Note the sleeping pupil, the cobwebs, and the picture of the policeman standing with his back to the 
murderer. The Kalem, or Pen, from which I have leproduced this and several other cartoons, would take 
high rank as a comic weekly in any country. It is one of the happiest literary products of the Turkish 
Revolution. 

[To face page 28. 



The Sultan as Revolutionist 

one kind of human product which could possibly 
flourish in such an atmosphere ; resigned, fatalist, 
religious, happy-go-lucky, hospitable ; content 
either to sit cross-legged, enjoying his cigarettes 
and his wives, or, if need were, to rise and 
slay the infidel at the pleasure of the " Padishah." 
He was the perfect individualist, caring neither 
the one way nor the other for his neighbours 
or his government, letting the world go by as 
it pleased. If there is such a thing as a Sultan's 
gratitude, he is the man who deserves it. 

But even the Old Turk had to be a man 
of much endurance. The taxes, nominally light, 
were increased by the extortion of the tax 
farmers. Sometimes they would refuse a receipt, 
and then collect the tax a second, a third, 
and even a fourth time ; and the utmost brutality 
was used. The licence of the freebooters meant 
the suffering of the peasant. And the weight 
of the despotism often fell heaviest of all on 
the Army, so dear to the hearts, so interwoven 
with the life, of the Turkish people. The 
unwisdom of thus straining loyalty to the break- 
ing-point seems so obvious that it almost justifies 
the Sultan's claim to be the arch-revolutionist. 

An officer told me that, being ordered to 
drive out a " band " from the marshes of Yenidje, 

29 



Turkey in Revolution 

he asked for some iron plates to be fixed on 
the punts, so that the soldiers might be protected 
from fire in approaching the rebel position. He 
was contemptuously refused. He reported that 
the serious pursuit of the bands required camping 
out for many nights at a time in the hills, but 
that the soldiers had no blankets or warm 
clothes. He was told that the soldiers must 
do their work, and not grumble. Pay was 
constantly in arrear — which explains, if it cannot 
justify, the terrible looting of villages whose 
traces I have seen in Macedonia. Men were 
kept with the colours for as long as twice the 
legal period. The Young Turk officers did 
not fail to point the moral. The belief in the 
" Padishah " was slowly but surely sapped, 
among the only men who could support his 
government. " This is what comes," they 
said, "of having a Sultan who rules without 
consulting his people." 

Meanwhile, the seed of liberty was germi- 
nating in other ground. Every man who had 
suffered ; every man who had studied in Europe, 
or secretly consorted with Europeans, or heard 
strange doctrine from the lips of innocent 
teachers of the French language ; every man 
who had once glowed with enthusiasm for the 

30 



The Sultan as Revolutionist 

short-lived Constitution of 1876, or had passed 
through the Iicole Civile, where the tradition 
of those days has never been wholly suppressed, 
was a potential reformer. The Sultan's remark 
was not so very wrong after all. The driving 
force of the movement, without which all the 
ideas of all the sages would have achieved 
nothing, was the misery which he himself 
created, the common round of ingenious oppres- 
sion which he dealt out to every class and every 
race in his afflicted Empire. 1 

1 On this chapter, part of which appeared in print 
before this book was written, an evening newspaper made 
the following comment : " Some curious tales come from 
the Turkish capital. . . . This belief that the blood-stained 
Sultan is the real author of Turkey's happiness makes too 
great a demand upon human credulity." 



3i 




j 



CHAPTER II 



THE OLD MACEDONIA 



ONLY those can fully realise what the 
Young Turks have accomplished who 
have seen something of the conditions from 
which they delivered their country. The pro- 
vinces of which English readers have heard the 
most are those of Armenia and Macedonia. 
The sufferings of the latter country were perhaps 
those which most impressed the mind of Europe, 
since its inhabitants were Europeans ; people 
who ought to belong to the comity of civilised 
nations ; people akin to those who, when liberated 
from the Hamidian tyranny, proved themselves 
capable of maintaining orderly, and sometimes 
progressive, governments. Its internal problems 
had also given rise to international complications. 
I had an opportunity of visiting it less than 
nine months before the Revolution. 

In Drama, in Serres, in Salonica there was 

33 c 



Turkey in Revolution 

some talk of progress. Europe had succeeded 
in attaching foreign officers to the gendarmerie 
in the capacity of inspectors, and in setting up 
a Financial Commission on which the great 
Powers were represented, but which, though it 
might criticise the budget to its heart's content, 
had no power to alter it. There were even 
4 'civil agents," the relics of the last reform scheme 
but one, who accompanied the Inspector-General 
on his annual progress through the country, and 
spent the rest of their time enjoying the sea 
breezes of Salonica. Something had certainly 
been accomplished. The officers of all the 
Powers concerned had worked manfully in their 
restricted and humiliating sphere. The presence of 
foreigners, with the right to photograph outrages, 
if not to prevent them, had drawn aside the veil 
which formerly concealed Macedonia from Europe. 
Yet, even here, complaints were rife. The gen- 
darmerie was not allowed to do its proper work ; 
there was constant and vexatious interference by 
the authorities ; any effort to question particular 
items in the estimates was resisted by the Presi- 
dent of the Financial Commission, as infringing 
the sovereignty of the Sultan. The prison- 
fortress, which dominated the town, contained 
fifteen hundred prisoners sentenced to terms of 

34 



SALONICA : THE WHITE TOWER. 



On my visit in 1907 a Bulgarian had just been hanged here, and his body 
exposed to public view for three days. 



[To face page 35. 



The Old Macedonia 

over three years, seventy of whom were confined 
in a room fourteen feet by forty. A Bulgarian 
had just been hanged in public at the White 
Tower and his body exposed for three days. 
The alleged crime had been committed six 
years before ; three prisoners had been condemned 
to death ; after three years, the sentence on two 
of them was reversed ; but both of these had 
already died in prison. 

These, however, were small matters ; it was 
when we travelled into the country that we 
began to understand the stern reality. Since 
1903, the date of the Bulgarian rising, things 
had gone from bad to worse. No amount of 
oppression will prevent the peasant and his 
wife from tilling the field and going to market, 
for the landlord must have his share of the 
harvest and the family must be fed ; and the 
traveller, hospitably entertained, may find some 
signs of prosperity if he chooses to limit him- 
self to the surface of what he sees. In 
Macedonia, however, he cannot shut his eyes 
to the evidence of the destroyed villages 
through which he must ride from time to time 
— some still level with the ground, others, 
whose houses were formerly of stone and 
slate, built up into ragged hovels of mud 

35 



Turkey in Revolution 

bricks and rough thatch. We passed near the 
lake of Yenidje, where, unknown to us, one 
of the most active members of the Committee 
of Union and Progress was operating with a 
small body of unpaid and ill-clad soldiers 
against the rebel bands. The villagers had 
been forbidden to go near the marshes, whose 
osier-beds they used for basket-making, and 
found themselves deprived of their former 
livelihood. We passed through Karaferia, the 
ancient Beroea, where, again unknown to us, 
a prominent member of the Committee was 
living quietly on his farm. Journeying through 
Monastir and Resna, we reached Ochrida, on 
the borders of Albania, a beautiful little town 
clustering round a hill on the borders of the 
great lake which bears the same name, and in 
full view of the towering Pindus range. The 
old city wall crowns the hill, and the massive, 
dark-yellow ruins of what was once the capital 
of a Bulgarian Czar catch your eye from afar as 
you approach at evening across the plain. A 
Turkish " Murder Committee" was the local 
institution which, at that particular moment, 
monopolised the popular interest. The late 
governor {kaimakam) was a Young Turk. A 
year before he had secretly implored a friend of 

36 



The Old Macedonia 



mine to obtain for him a copy of Herbert Spencer. 
He interfered to prevent the murders. As a con- 
sequence, he had just been removed from his 
post by the superior authorities. Our host was 
a foreigner under consular protection — no one 
else dared to take us in. He declared that 
things were going from bad to worse. Nothing 
short of an international occupation, like that 
of Crete, would suffice to restore order. The 
people of all races would quickly learn to value 
peace and tranquillity, and after a time the only 
thincr needed would be an efficient orendarmerie. 
Nothing, however, was to be hoped from the 
present government. The Turkish soldiers were 
constantly pillaging. What else could they do? 
They were good fellows {braves gens), but they 
were unpaid. It was the Government's fault. 

The country, indeed, was swarming with 
soldiers. The railways carried very little else. 
The land was going out of cultivation. Prices 
had risen enormously ; famine was aiding the 
work of persecution. The great hope of the 
people was emigration, which the government 
encouraged. Great numbers of men had gone 
— an average of two per family in some places ; 
one village with two hundred and fifty houses 
had lost four hundred of its men. The women 

37 



Turkey in Revolution 

were working the land in the immediate neigh- 
bourhood of the villages. The more distant 
fields, to which the men would formerly tramp 
for many miles in the small hours of the morn- 
ing, were lying fallow ; for the order had gone 
forth that no one must be out at night. Since 
the rising the Government had found it more 
convenient to keep down the male popula- 
tion by playing upon the rivalries of Greeks 
and Bulgarians. These rivalries were perpetu- 
ally intensified by the near prospect of some 
interference by the Powers of Europe, which 
might bring territorial changes, and possibly 
end in a partition. There was as much des- 
truction of life by Christians as by Moslems. 
While the Inspector-General assured us that 
the Government inquired into every alleged evil 
and that none remained unremedied, the foreign 
consuls were reporting an average of two hundred 
political murders a month. ... In one kaza 
(rural district) where we spent a night not less 
than a hundred had taken place in the past 
seven months. 

Returning to Monastir, and dining in the 
pleasant little Hotel Royal, where the tables 
are set out in the neatly-kept garden, it was 
easy, much more easy than one imagines when 

3* 



The Old Macedonia 



at a distance, to forget the horrors of wh ich 
one's eyes and ears gave daily proof. Yet it 
could not be for long. A violent outrage in a 
neighbouring street was reported as we sat at 
dinner. The thing would keep forcing itself 
upon us, invading our peace, even here, in the 
well-paved town, whose white plastered houses 
and numerous mosques, with their intermingled 
trees, make a pleasant and refreshing contrast 
to the dull grey of the surrounding amphitheatre 
of hills. u We think things are getting better," 
said our companion, " because we are getting 
more used to them." It seemed, indeed, as if 
there were no way out of the vicious circle of 
violence and retaliation. Every party to the 
odious struggle was sinking into lower depths 
of moral degradation. The Bulgarian popula- 
tion, especially, was becoming desperate. There 
was wild talk in irresponsible quarters about 
attacking the property and persons of foreigners, 
to compel the attention and the interference of 
Europe. The idea of killing aroused no horror ; 
it was becoming one of the commonplace facts 
of daily life. 

And then, strangely, suddenly, there was a 
noise in the street. It was a small wedding- 
party, and a band was leading it, and the band 

39 



Turkey in Revolution 

was playing — yes, the Marseillaise ! Nearer 
came its sharp, short notes, its gaiety, its 
triumphant impudence, the tune with the throb 
of liberty in it, the song that changed the face 
of Europe. 

''Allons enfants de la patrie, 
Le jour de gloire est arrive ; 
Contre nous de la tyrannie 
L'etendard sanglant est leve" . . . 

It was dying away already. There was silence 
once more in the deserted street. Was it the 
chance selection of an indifferent bandmaster? 
Or had it, all unknown to the ignorant authori- 
ties, a meaning for the initiated — and the added 
sweetness of the stolen waters ? 

I could not tell. I asked myself no such 
questions ; there was nothing in the pervading 
atmosphere of gloom to suggest them. I for- 
got the incident ; and only unearthed it, in a 
corner of my notebook, some weeks after the 
"day of glory" had in fact arrived. 



40 



CHAPTER III 



SOWING THE SEED 



ALONICA, the principal city of Mace- 



doriia, lies on the shore of a broad gulf, 
across which, on a clear day, may be seen the 
towering outline of Mount Olympus. The 
ancient walls rise from the edge of the water 
and slope up the hills on which the town 
is built, enclosing it in a rough semicircle, 
except where, along the quays, the commerce 
and pleasure of modern times has broken 
through the old limits and extended a line of 
buildings beyond them on either side. At one 
point in the walls the sculptured piers and 
buttresses of a Roman arch mark the place 
where the famous road, the Via Egnatia, left 
Thessalonica, and cut straight across the Balkan 
peninsula to the Adriatic Sea. There is an 
atmosphere of freedom about Salonica, of up- 
to-dateness in its thriving trade, neat, white 




Turkey in Revolution 

houses, and well-paved streets lined with trees. 
There has been, indeed, greater liberty there 
than in almost any other part of the Empire. 
To this the large Jewish population has con- 
tributed. The Jewish women are, indeed, the 
most picturesque element in the town, with 
their white dresses loosely caught up at the 
waist, the hair in long plaits down the back, 
and the bright and many-coloured handker- 
chiefs which they wear over their heads and 
shoulders. Their unveiled faces and free and 
dignified motions are one of the pleasantest 
sights which the traveller in Turkey, accus- 
tomed to veils and black robes, encounters on 
reaching Salonica. This was the place which 
gave birth to the Revolution. 

In saying this, I do not forget the gradual 
and secret permeation of Western ideas which 
had been in progress for half a century. This 
is a part of the history of Turkey which 
remains to be written. In the intellectual 
sphere, the greatest debt of Young Turkey is 
her debt to France. It was through French 
books or French translations of English books, 
through intercourse with Frenchmen, through 
the ideas and traditions of French democracy, 
that the mind of Turkey was awakened. It 

42 



Sowing the Seed 

was the exiles in Paris, again, who suggested 
to the reformers of Turkey the idea of a 
definite organisation. It was in Paris that 
their activities culminated, at the end of 1907, 
in a secret revolutionary congress at which 
Turks, Armenians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Jews, 
Arabs, and Albanians were all represented, and 
which, if the reports of the French Socialist 
press were correct, resolved to work for the 
abdication of the Sultan and the summoning 
of a Parliament. 

It was in Salonica, however, that the body 
was formed which struck the blow. An 
informal " Committee of Liberty " was started 
there several years ago. In 1906 it allied 
itself with the Paris Committee, which thence- 
forward became its Paris branch ; and it grew 
rapidly into the definite and complete organisa- 
tion which was ultimately to destroy the 
tyranny of the Sultan. A definite impetus 
was given to the movement at this time by 
causes which lay in the sphere of foreign, 
rather than of home, politics. The evils of the 
home government were little worse than they 
had been for years ; but the foreign Powers 
were becoming active again. The joint naval 
demonstration initiated by Lord Lansdowne at 

43 



Turkey in Revolution 

the end of 1905 had just taken place. The 
enemies of the Turkish government, whether 
moved by self-interest or by the claims of 
humanity, were renewing their attacks. There 
was even talk of a partition of Macedonia. 
If things were to continue as they were, the 
province would be lost to the Empire. It 
was time for more definite preparations and a 
more strenuous policy. 

It was in such circumstances that the secret 
society was formed which has since become 
known to the world as the Committee of 
Union and Progress. Its history and its work 
are by no means easy to learn with accuracy, 
for the habit of secrecy is strong, and the 
principles of association forbid its members to 
divulge the names of the leading men. Nothing 
written with any authority has yet found its 
way into print, and many of the details must 
for the present be taken as uncertain. It is 
possible, however, to indicate the general 
outline of events. 

The original founders, whoever they may 
have been, had first to decide upon the method 
of enlisting new members. One of them would 
offer to the intended proselyte to make known 
to him a secret of profound moment, but only 

44 



Sowing the Seed 

on the condition that he would swear before- 
hand never to reveal it to another without 
permission. If he was willing to do this, and 
appeared worthy of trust, he was solemnly 
sworn, and the ideas of the Society were 
explained to him. 

The next stage, however, was the most 
important, and it was invested with every 
circumstance of awe and solemnity. The form 
of initiation crystallised into a definite ritual. 
The man was blindfolded, and led to a secret 
place whose whereabouts was entirely con- 
cealed from him. The bandage was then re- 
moved from his eyes, and he found himself, 
perhaps in a darkened room, perhaps in a 
lonely hollow of the hills, in the presence of 
three strangers wearing black masks. These 
administered to him the oath which was to 
become the rule of his life. Swearing on the 
sword and on the Sacred Book, he bound 
himself to devote his whole energies to the 
redemption of his country, to obey every order 
given to him through the channels of the 
Society, never to reveal its secrets, and to 
kill any person, however near and dear to him, 
whom it might condemn to suffer death. His 
eyes were again covered, and he was led back 

45 



Turkey in Revolution 

to the place from which he had started on the 
mysterious journey. 

His fidelity was afterwards tested by a 
prolonged novitiate, during which his conduct 
was watched by the members, with none of 
whom, except his original introducer, he was 
allowed to become acquainted. Finally, he 
was affiliated to one of the local branches, 
which mi^ht consist of one or two hundred 
members. Of these, however, he was not per- 
mitted to know more than four. Five was 
the largest number which ever met together 
in a single group. For the purposes of com- 
munication, each group contained one " guide " 
who received the orders of the Committee from 
the representative of another group, and 
whose business it was to pass them on without 
a moment's delay. That there must have been 
some directing body, presumably in Salonica, 
is obvious ; but its identity has never been 
divulged. The only ascertainable fact is the 
statement of the members of the Committee 
that there was no single leader. It is esti- 
mated that there were in the European provinces, 
during the final stage of the revolutionary work, 
some twenty thousand initiated members. In 
Asia there was probably a somewhat smaller 

46 



Sowing the Seed 

number. The expenses were defrayed by a 
contribution consisting of at least 2 per cent, 
of every member's income. 

The work of this Committee was difficult and 
dangerous in the extreme. It was impossible 
to use the local post-offices for fear of discovery, 
and all messages had to be conveyed personally. 
No small part was played by women, who 
took advantage of the inviolability of the 
harem, and conveyed written messages con- 
cealed about their dress. The whole of the 
work had to be conducted in the face of an 
elaborate system of official espionage whose 
ramifications were everywhere, and whose 
organisation was as perfect as experience could 
make it. The Committee developed a rival 
system ; the spies became known, and were 
spied upon in their turn ; the death penalty 
was sometimes ruthlessly applied. The des- 
potism, in a word, was fought with its own 
weapons. The limitation of each member to 
his own little group was a safeguard against 
any single betrayal on a large scale ; but among 
so great a number of members, including many 
Christians and Jews as well as Turks, there 
must have been countless opportunities for 
treachery. From time to time arrests were 

47 



Turkey in Revolution 

made by the Government ; imprisonments and 
executions followed ; endeavours, not stopping 
short of torture, were used to obtain incrimina- 
ting evidence. But there is no proof of a 
single betrayal by any initiated member. There 
seems to have been, in the working of this 
widespread association of isolated units, a com- 
plete though half-unconscious co-operation. 
The idea of the absolute equality of all 
members, one of the first laws of the Society, 
was perhaps the chief source of its strength. 
Its authors had before them the example of 
the " Internal Organisation" of the Mace- 
donian Bulgars, from which they drew many 
hints. They determined, however, to avoid 
the danger of rival leaderships. They were 
enabled to create a revolutionary weapon perhaps 
unparalleled both in force and quality. 

How could all this activity remain unknown 
to the outside world? The answer is that its 
continued existence depended entirely on its 
secrecy. 11 We could not communicate with 
you," said the Young Turks to the Balkan 
Committee, " though we knew that your 
objects were really the same as ours ; so we 
resolved to convince you by our deeds." 

A few foreigners dimly saw that discontent 
48 



Sowing the Seed 

was beginning to take a more organised form, 
and prophesied some great change on the 
death of the Sultan. I look back at the notes 
I made in Constantinople the year before the 
Revolution : " Disaffection rife. . . . New theo- 
logy movement, liberal. . . . Recent events at 
Erzeroum, refusal to pay taxes, recall of Vali, 
&c. . . . Definite organisation of liberal Turks 
in Anatolia. . . . Turks talk sedition freely in 
private. . . . does not think any sub- 

stantial change will take place on Sultan's 
death. . . . Opinion widespread that no great 
improvement will be effected without war." 
But for the most part, " those who knew " 
were taken entirely by surprise ; and to the 
outsider, warned as he so often is of the 
danger of deception, it is some consolation that 
at any rate he cannot be more profoundly mis- 
taken than were the experts themselves. 

We knew, in a general way, the Young 
Turk policy ; but the actual Young Turks 
whom we met were too often of an unim- 
pressive type, restless, dissatisfied, denation- 
alised, frequenters of cafeVchantants, ashamed 
rather of the primitiveness and ignorance of 
their government than of its inhumanity and 
corruption. The force, the ubiquitousness, the 

49 d 



Turkey in Revolution 

elaborate organisation, were all hidden from us. 
It is only now, after the event, that we can 
begin to piece together the history of this 
amazing Revolution. 

The Committee's work among the officers of 
the Army was perhaps the most far-reaching 
in its results. Macedonia was chosen as the 
chief field for its operations. There it was 
easier than elsewhere to communicate with 
Europe. There the officers had before their 
eyes the obvious and imminent danger of a 
disruption of the Empire. There they could 
contrast their own condition with that of the 
foreign officers whom Europe had forced upon 
the Sultan as reformers of the gendarmerie — 
men in smart uniforms, regularly paid, pro- 
moted for their merit. The great majority of 
the officers of the 3rd Army Corps, which 
has its headquarters at Salonica, were in time 
won over. This was early seen to be the key 
of the situation, since the 3rd Army Corps, if 
it had remained unconverted, could have sup- 
pressed the Revolution in a week. The younger 
officers, who had received at the military school 
a good general education, were readily gained. 
In their turn they became the most active of 
the propagandists. The more thoroughly they 

50 



Sowing the Seed 

were devoted to their career and the more 
keen was their professional ambition, the longer 
was their list of grievances. The largest 
number of converts were among the men who 
had been trained at the Staff College. They 
ingeniously persuaded the War Office that the 
commandant of every battalion should, if pos- 
sible, be a Staff College man. A later sugges- 
tion — of course quite unconnected with the first 
— was that the commandant should be allowed 
to choose his subordinate officers. This also 
was acceded to, though the authorities never 
quite laid aside their suspicion, and in every 
battalion there was at least one officer who 
was recognised as a Palace spy, and was known 
to possess the cypher through which he could 
communicate direct with Yildiz Kiosk. The 
" converted " officers were the means of winning 
over the common soldiers. The relations be- 
tween officers and men in the Turkish Army 
are intimate ; the rank and file follow their 
superiors like children. The troops were 
scattered over the country in small bodies, and 
many opportunities presented themselves of in- 
stilling, slowly and carefully, sentiments of dis- 
content, resentment, and hope. I have described 
elsewhere the hardships which the common 

Si 



Turkey in Revolution 

soldiers had to suffer. Full advantage was 
taken of these. It was not into Macedonia 
alone that the new principles were carried. 
Dr. Nazim Bey, for instance, was working for 
eighteen months before the Revolution, disguised 
as a preacher, among the regiments stationed in 
Asia Minor. 

The propaganda was spread far and wide 
among all classes. The romantic history of 
the adventures, disguises, and discoveries, of 
the subterranean scheming and plotting, has 
yet to be written. Some members of the Com- 
mittee turned themselves into hawkers, or vil- 
lage pedlars, selling beads or nicknacks all day, 
in the hope that they might be able, unseen 
and unknown, to slip into trusted hands a copy 
of the revolutionary journal, the Mechveret. 
One member kept a barbers shop in Bagdad; 
another took the post of cook in the Sultans 
kitchen. In many parts of the Empire there 
were men practising ostensibly as doctors or 
lawyers, whose real business was the dissemina- 
tion of liberal ideas, or the formation of local 
branches of the Committee. Some entered, as 
coachmen or domestics, into the service of sus- 
pected officials, whose secrets they learned on 
the back-stairs. A peculiarly successful coup 

52 




Sowing the Seed 

was made at the Salonica post-office. The 
staff was won over to a man, and, in addi- 
tion, the entourage of the Inspector-General 
was engaged in the game. Newspapers and 
other literature were forwarded from abroad, 
under cover to His Excellency himself, and 
duly handed over to the real consignees. 

A powerful impulse was given to the move- 
ment by the events which startled the diplomatic 
world in the winter of 1907. Austria- Hungary, 
it appeared, while ostensibly urging reforms on 
the Porte, had really been bargaining for the 
construction of a railway through Novi- Bazar, 
which might ultimately give her the control of 
Macedonia. Sir Edward Grey was leading 
what was left of the Concert of Europe towards 
more drastic reforms, to be imposed from with- 
out on the unwilling Turkish Government. 
England and Russia were drawing together ; 
and the meeting of King Edward and the Czar 
at Reval seemed to portend a new and more 
active policy in the Near East, which would 
lead up, sooner or later, to the disruption of 
the Sultans Empire. It was felt that the time 
to act was at hand. The date of the in- 
tended rising was fixed for the feast of Bai- 
ram, in the coming autumn of 1908. Precise 

53 



Turkey in Revolution 

calculations were made as to which troops could 
be relied on for the revolt. It was expected 
to involve a civil war of not less than six 
months. The commanders were chosen, and it 
was even agreed that the khaki uniform of the 
light infantry should be adopted, rather than 
the blue. New efforts were made to strike 
terror into the official spies. On June 12th 
an attempt was made on the life of Nazim 
Bey, the commandant de place of Salonica, who 
was on the point of leaving for Constantinople 
with the information which he had collected 
as to the new movement. In consequence of 
this incident, a special commission was sent 
from the capital to Salonica. Its nominal busi- 
ness was the inspection of military stores. Its 
real object, however, was well known. It was 
to discover the persons concerned in the move- 
ment, and thus enable the Sultan to suppress 
it with a strong hand. At its head was Ismail 
Mahir Pasha, the chief man in the Secret 
Intelligence Department. The fat was in the 
fire. 



54 



CHAPTER IV 



THE TWENTY-FOURTH OF JULY 

HE commission presided over by Ismail 



-L Mahir — who in December last paid the 
penalty by the hand of an assassin in the streets 
of Stamboul — took no trouble to conceal its real 
purpose. It took up its quarters in the principal 
hotel, summoned witnesses, and conducted its 
examinations openly. Though the existence of 
a seditious organisation was known, its power 
was by no means realised. The calculation of 
the authorities was, perhaps, that the movement 
would collapse when it was shown that the 
Government was alive to it, and that the imme- 
diate punishment of a few leading men would 
inspire their followers with enough fear to keep 
them quiet. The commission was dilatory, and 
the month of June was over before their report 
was ready. They had discovered the outline 
of the Committee's organisation, and were able 




5S 



Turkey in Revolution 

to give some definite facts as to the spread of 
the liberal movement in the Army. One of 
the most important members of the Committee 
was arrested in Salonica. The house of another 
was entered by the police and searched. Enver 
Bey, whose name has since become so famous, 
was not threatened with punishment, but was 
invited to the capital in a letter couched in 
friendly terms, and containing a promise of pro- 
motion. He knew what the invitation was 
worth, and that the only promotion he was 
likely to obtain was promotion to the bottom 
of the Bosphorus. In consultation with his 
comrades he resolved that the moment had 
come to take the final step. He immediately 
fled from Salonica to the mountains of the in- 
terior. Assuming the dress of a peasant, and 
allowing his beard to grow, he travelled rapidly 
from place to place, now collecting groups of 
villagers and explaining the situation to them, 
now communicating with the officers of the 
various detachments, and urging them to put 
the final touches to their preparations. 

The first overt act — and the first sign of the 
coming storm which reached the ears of Europe 
— took place at Resna. The little town in the 
heart of the mountains, where I took lunch in 

56 



The Twenty-fourth of July 

the inn one sunny day, less than a year before 
the Revolution, is a picturesque collection of 
low, tumble-down houses with overhanging 
wooden balconies. The muddy trickle, which 
flows down the very middle of the main street, 
serves the common purpose of wash-house, 
drinking-trough, and sewer. The town, together 
with the lake of Presba, lies in a small but flat 
plain, surrounded by high though not very 
rocky hills, bare as a rule at the summits, but 
clothed up the side in most places with dense 
oak scrub. It was from Resna that the signal 
was given for the Macedonian rising of 1903. 

Here, on July 4, 1908, a brevet-major, Niazi 
Bey by name, first raised the banner of revolt. 
He spread the report that a rebel band was 
in the neighbourhood, and thus sent off the 
greater part of the local garrison on a wild- 
goose chase. No sooner were their backs turned 
than he collected 18 soldiers, a few civil officials, 
and about 150 of the Moslem population ; 
secured 75 rifles, 15 boxes of ammunition, and, 
what was more important, £600 in cash from 
the battalion fund ; and set off into the hills. 
There was at first a panic among the Christian 
inhabitants, for Niazi, a rough, soldierly man 
of gigantic height, had gained a reputation for 

57 



Turkey in Revolution 

ferocity in his operations against rebels. But 
his first proclamation allayed their fears. " We 
have come out to fight against the despotism, 
if necessary. But our objects are pacific and 
liberal. We call upon all Ottoman subjects to 
inaugurate a new era of equality. To you 
Christians we say, the great Powers and the 
Balkan States have done nothing for you. 
They have only sowed discord between you 
while playing for their own hand. Our govern- 
ment is also to blame. Let us work together 
for our country. I promise freedom to every 
race and creed, on condition that they renounce 
all ideas of annexation to other countries. So 
long as a Turk remains alive, this country will 
belong to the Ottomans. I appeal to all the 
bands to report themselves to me and arrange a 
common programme." Two lieutenants from a 
neighbouring garrison, with their men, and a 
number of gendarmes, bringing 70 rifles in all, 
immediately joined him. A battalion was sent 
from Monastir to capture him. It was com- 
manded by one of his best friends, and marched 
into his camp as a reinforcement. He com- 
pelled the local prefect {mudir) to take letters 
to the Inspector-General and the governor 
(vali) of Monastir, stating that " he had left 

5S 



The Twenty-fourth of July 

the service, and would defend freedom, truth, 
and property without distinction of race or 
religion." " At Constantinople," we read in the 
newspapers of the day, "the occurrence has 
made a deep impression, as it is attributed to 
Young Turk influences." 

The next three weeks are a period of wild 
rumours, and a confused ebb and flow ; of growing 
dismay at Yildiz and growing hope and deter- 
mination at Monastir. While Enver is carrying 
the fiery cross from village to village, Niazi is 
forming the nucleus of the army of revolution ; 
for a civil war is anticipated. He moves towards 
Fiorina, a picturesque little country town on the 
edge of the plain of Monastir ; then westwards 
to the lake of Ochrida, which I have already 
described. Here he establishes his headquarters 
at Starova. He issues another proclamation, 
declaring that the Constitution of 1876 must 
be revived. He calls upon all the inhabitants 
to furnish food supplies to the "patriots," who 
now number 200; receipts will be given as in 
time of war. He wires to the Sultan demanding 
immediate surrender. His numbers are con- 
stantly reinforced. On the 14th he is joined 
by a general of division. Meantime the small, 
scattered garrisons of the neighbourhood mutiny 

59 



Turkey in Revolution 

one by one. They break into the dep6ts and 
distribute the arms among the population, 
Christians included. Castoria comes over on 
the 7th, Serres on the 16th, Tikvesh on the 
17th, Vodena on the 21st. Placards demanding 
the Constitution are posted up at Monastir on 
the 6th, but torn down by the police ; forwarded 
to Constantinople on the 7th ; issued to the 
representatives of the great Powers on the 19th. 
Ninety officers telegraph to the Sultan from 
Monastir, demanding immediate redress of 
grievances. 

The Albanians begin to move. At Korcha 
they declare their union with the revolutionaries. 
At Liuma and Ferizovitch and Prishtina they 
expel the Turkish officials. The movement 
culminates on the 22nd, when they meet at 
Ferizovitch in numbers variously estimated at 
from ten to fifteen thousand, and telegraph 
to the Sultan that they have taken the oath 
(dessa) in favour of the Constitution. The 
method of their conversion still remains a 
mystery. The Young Turk envoys seem to 
have played upon their disgust with continued 
bloodshed ; their desire for schools, which the 
Sultan had forbidden; their demand for economic 
development to relieve their poverty ; their 

60 



The Twenty-fourth of July 

hatred of the Austrians, stimulated to fury (so 
the story goes) by the opening of a new cafe- 
chantant in Uskub. 

During all this time the Palace is not inactive. 
General Shemshi Pasha, who has been operating 
against the Albanians at Mitrovitza, is sent to 
Monastir to crush the revolt. As he is entering 
a carriage, against the advice of his friends, 
to drive to Resna, he is shot. General Nachmi 
is ordered to succeed him, but refuses the task. 
General Osman Feizi is appointed, but is told 
to proceed slowly, and attempt to win over 
the insurgents with promises of promotion, 
decorations, and gifts. On the day before the 
grant of the Constitution we hear of him 
carried off to Ochrida, without violence, and 
placed under the surveillance of Niazi. 
Absurd official despatches are continually issued 
from Constantinople. The " abnormal occur- 
rences among the troops " are at one moment 
declared to be " at an end." At the next, the 
whole of the officers of the 3rd Army Corps 
are cashiered — a semi-official comment being 
added to the effect that this difficult order " 
may not be immediately executed. On the 
8th Enver Bey is reported killed ; he writes 
to a Vienna paper that he is " living with his 

61 



Turkey in Revolution 

heroic comrades in the hills, to combat the 
atrocities of the absolutist regime, and to 
obtain a National Assembly as a means of 
putting an end to the fratricidal murders hitherto 
occurring in his beloved fatherland." A few 
days pass, and we hear of him as being promised 
forgiveness and promotion to the rank of general 
if he returns to his allegiance. The disaffection 
spreads to the 2nd Army Corps at Adrianople, 
where the troops have been for some time in a 
ferment over military grievances. It reaches 
the 4th Army Corps at Smyrna. The 1st at 
Constantinople itself cannot be trusted. On 
July 10th, 38 officers of the 3rd Army Corps are 
arrested, brought to Constantinople, and im- 
prisoned. On the 1 6th, an amnesty is proclaimed 
for all the Young Turk officers in Macedonia. 
Two divisions are ordered from Smyrna, reach 
Salonica on the 16th, and are marched to 
Monastir. But the agents of the Committee 
are with them, and the work of propaganda, 
carried on intermittently for months past, is 
brought to a head on the journey. If they 
can be persuaded to attack their comrades the 
civil war will be begun. They refuse to fire. 
One battalion declares that it will fight against 
the despotism, but not against its friends. 

62 



SALONICA. 

(a) The Quay, showing the White Tower in the distance. 




[To face page 62. 



The Twenty-fourth of July 

Munir Pasha, late ambassador at Paris, is 
dispatched to Athens and Belgrade with the 
object, it is believed, of stirring up Greek and 
Servian bands to attack the revolutionaries. 
Orders are issued to the authorities in Macedonia 
to hinder the foreign consuls from obtaining 
news. Force proving ineffective, conciliation 
is tried on a magnificent scale. Five hundred 
and fifty officers receive promotion in a single 
day. The Government borrows ^80,000 from 
the Ottoman Bank and sends it to Salonica 
to pay the troops. The 38 imprisoned officers 
are pardoned and released. On the 22nd the 
Grand Vizier, Ferid, is dismissed, and the 
semi-liberal Said put in his place. But the 
tumult is not allayed ; the determination of 
the Committee is growing. " A belief is preva- 
lent," says the Constantinople correspondent of 
the Times, " that the rising will ultimately 
necessitate a change in the existing system of 
government." 

A new government has, in fact, already taken 
the place of the old in Macedonia. The Com- 
mittee has already begun to assume executive 
power and to collect taxes. One of the first and 
happiest results is the disappearance of racial 
strife. Brigandage, and the war of the bands, 

63 



Turkey in Revolution 

suddenly come to an end. This helps to win 
over the peaceful inhabitants. Monastir is per- 
fectly quiet ; the peasants, to a man, are on the 
side of the Young Turks. But there is another 
side to the revolutionary government. It resolves 
to strike terror into the heart of every reactionary. 
A military chaplain, on his way to Constantinople 
to report on the movement, is shot at Salonica ; 
a member of the ill-fated commission of inquiry 
is fired at and wounded the next day ; the Presi- 
dent, Ismail Mahir, escapes to Constantinople 
just in time. General Osman Hidayet is shot 
at Monastir while reading an Imperial order in 
front of the barracks, in the presence of two 
thousand troops. The Young Turk officers 
declare that every general in Macedonia will 
be killed, unless the Constitution is granted. 
The murders are deliberate executions, ordered 
by a responsible authority ; when their object 
is gained, they cease. 

Before Europe understands the extent of the 
movement, and while the newspapers are still 
giving the first place to the details of the Anglo- 
Russian reform scheme, Niazi's eighteen men 
have grown to such a number that they 
" surround " Monastir. Within the town a 
vast meeting of citizens is demanding the Con- 

64 




— i 



The Twenty-fourth of July 

stitution, and 300 officers, assembled in the 
Public Gardens, have ordered the military band 
to play the Marseillaise. 

The end was now near. On July 23rd a 
definite ultimatum was presented to the Sultan, 
in the form of a telegram from the Committee 
of Union and Progress at Salonica. It stated 
that unless the Constitution — understood to 
mean the Constitution of 1876 — were granted 
within twenty-four hours, the troops of the 
2nd and 3rd Army Corps would march on the 
capital. The scene now shifts to Constantinople. 
The telegram having arrived during the morning, 
the Sultan had the afternoon and night during 
which to consider his reply. There was no time 
for delay, and the Palace officials hastily con- 
sulted together as to who should present His 
Majesty with the telegram. He was fully 
informed of the course of events, which his 
favourites were afraid to conceal for fear of the 
possible consequences. But it might be surmised 
that the person who announced the fatal news 
would not be looked upon with favour, and none 
showed much enthusiasm for the task. At last 
Galib Pasha, the Master of the Ceremonies, took 
in the ultimatum. To his astonishment the 
Sultan received it with the utmost calmness, 

65 e 



Turkey in Revolution 

and said that the Constitution was an excellent 
idea. He had in fact been working for it and 
hoping to restore it. At the Council of Ministers, 
however, which was hastily assembled that night 
at Yildiz Kiosk, he seems to have reconsidered 
his position, and to have revolted, not unnatu- 
rally, at the idea of yielding to the peremptory 
order of an unrecognised society. The question 
was debated keenly and long. The opinion of 
Said Pasha and Kiamil Pasha was strongly in 
favour of giving in. The telegram from the 
Albanians at Ferizovitch was a heavy blow. 
But against it might be set the loyalty of the 
Palace Guard, of a part, perhaps, of the ist Army 
Corps at Constantinople, and of all the reactionary 
elements in the Asiatic provinces. The decision 
trembled in the balance. The Sultan's favourite 
Arab astrologer was consulted, and is said to 
have been the first to pronounce the fatal word 
" Constitution." The final turn was given by 
the opinion of the Sheikh-ul- Islam, who declared 
that the Constitution was in accordance with the 
Sacred Law, and that the Sultan would come 
into conflict with that law if he refused to grant 
it. After eighteen hours of the twenty-four had 
elapsed, in the early morning of July 24th, 
the Sultans acceptance was telegraphed to 

66 



SALONICA. 

Rejoicings after the grant of the Constitution. A procession of Bulgarians. 

[To face 



The Twenty-fourth of July 

Salonica. In that night the despotism fell, 
unhonoured and undefended. Men awoke in 
the morning, and it was gone. 

Strangely enough, when the news of the final 
surrender reached the headquarters of the 
Revolution, it was found to be wholly unneces- 
sary. The Constitution was already proclaimed. 
The Ministers might have spared their breath, 
as far as Macedonia was concerned. It was 
already free. On the day before, the announce- 
ment had been made at Monastir, Veles, and 
a score of other towns. At Salonica the people 
had marched in procession to the Inspector- 
General and induced him, half by persuasion 
and half by compulsion, to read the proclamation 
in public. By the time that the Sultans belated 
capitulation was known the w T alls were covered 
with placards, and the populace was parading 
the streets in honour of Liberty. The Sultan's 
firman was read on the 24th as a matter of 
form, but the chief event was the release of the 
political prisoners from the great fortress which 
stands above the city, at the apex of its ancient 
walls. The common criminals, finding that the 
guard had gone off to celebrate the Constitution, 
walked out as well. 

The hastily printed post-cards celebrating the 
67 



Turkey in Revolution 

birth of the Constitution at Salonica are dated, 
according to the Old Style, the nth, that is, the 
24th, of July. 

All was not yet over, however. The Court 
Gazette of July 24th contained the grant of the 
Constitution, though it was stowed away in a 
corner, nearly the whole paper being filled with 
lists of promotions. The next day a general 
amnesty was proclaimed for political offences, 
and a decree was published making espionage a 
crime. But the Sultan's signature to the trade 1 
bestowing the Constitution, and his oath to 
observe it, had yet to be obtained. Some troops 
of the Macedonian garrison hastily entrained for 
the capital, and were stationed in the neigh- 
bourhood of the Palace. On the 31st four 
members of the Committee demanded an 
audience of the Sultan. They entered the 
Palace with loaded revolvers in their pockets, 
prepared, if the Sultan refused their request, to 
take his life on the spot, and sell their own as 
dearly as might be. In the event of the failure 
of their mission an attack was to be made by 
the loyal battalions upon the Palace Guard ; the 
signal was to be given by the dropping of a 
white handkerchief from the window. The 
signal was unnecessary. The Sultan signed 

68 



The Twenty-fourth of July 

readily, and took the oath, which he subsequently 
renewed in solemn form before the Sheikh-ul- 
Islam and the Grand Vizier. 

But the Committee were not yet satisfied. 
The Sultan, after his manner, would not yield 
a single inch on which it was possible to hold 
his ground. In his grant of the Constitution 
he retained in his own hands the appointment 
of the Ministers of War, of Marine, and of the 
Interior. He was quickly given to understand 
that this would not be tolerated. The military 
and naval officers who had risked their lives for 
the Revolution were not going to be put off 
with a paper Constitution, which would leave 
the Army and Navy under the command of 
Yildiz ; nor were the civilians any more ready 
to entrust themselves to a " Palace " Minister 
of the Interior, who would in effect control the 
departments of Justice and Education, as well as 
the civil administration. The monarch bowed 
to the inevitable, and resigned the three most 
important Ministries to the authority of the 
future Parliament. He again yielded to popular 
opinion in the matter of the Grand Vizierate. 
He had appointed Said Pasha, a man of 
moderate liberal opinions, in the hope that he 
might successfully play for the hundredth time 

69 



Turkey in Revolution 

the old game of promising reforms, to be 
executed on his own initiative at some future 
date. Public opinion, however, demanded the 
dismissal of Said, who had been concerned in 
the withdrawal of the old Constitution, and on 
August 5 th he resigned his post, and was suc- 
ceeded by Kiamil Pasha. 

The sudden attainment of liberty, practically 
without bloodshed, produced in Macedonia a 
kind of delirium. The perpetual succession of 
murders and counter-murders had become stale 
and disgusting ; yet it had seemed as if it could 
never have an end. The dramatic change of 
government appeared to break the hideous spell. 
Fraternity, freedom — words which had lost their 
meaning in the blind hatred of Turks and 
Christians, Bulgarians and Greeks — suddenly 
became realities. The record of the scenes in 
Salonica reads like the story of a dream. The 
people gave themselves up to transports of joy. 
The outlaws who for years had been fighting 
or plundering in the interior — men with bronzed 
faces and tattered clothes, but armed to the 
teeth — marched in from the country. They did 
not, as has been supposed, lay down their 
weapons ; but they joined in peaceful pro- 
cessions through the streets, they shook hands, 

70 



The Twenty -fourth of July 

they kissed each other, they sat together in the 
cafes, they danced and sang with the mixed 
populace of Jews, Greeks, Bulgarians, and 
Turks. Bands which had been recruited in 
Crete or Thessaly, and sent to Macedonia to 
support the Greek cause, were shipped off, 
with courtesy but without delay, to their re- 
spective homes. The famous chiefs, Apostol, 
Sandansky, and the rest, whose names had 
been a terror, but who represented, or had 
once represented, a genuine native rebellion 
against a tyrannous government, were feted and 
applauded. The dignitaries of every Church 
took part in the demonstrations. Greek metro- 
politans, Bulgarian priests, and Turkish mollahs 
clasped one another round the neck amid the 
frantic cheers of the crowd. Special trains, 
decorated with the red and white emblems of 
the Constitution, discharged thousands of sight- 
seers. In the gardens of the White Tower, 
which the Sultan immediately presented to the 
Committee of Union and Progress as its head- 
quarters, the patriotic drama, Vatan or " The 
Fatherland," was performed before a vast 
audience, for the benefit of the Young Turk 
funds. 

The prevailing excitement extended to the 
7i 



Turkey in Revolution 

Turkish women, who threw off their veils for 
the first time in their lives, and mingled in the 
celebrations on equal terms with the men. Both 
freedom and order were jealously guarded. An 
unwise attempt to apply the censorship of books 
at the post-office was immediately detected and 
prevented. A proclamation was issued calling 
upon all persons, in the name of Liberty, to 
respect life and property. 

Throughout the Empire the immediate effect 
of the Revolution was very great. The re- 
joicings of Salonica were repeated in various 
forms from Janina to Bagdad. At Constanti- 
nople the common people, who had not realised 
the extent of the movement in Macedonia, and 
regarded the Constitution as the free gift of 
the Sultan, assembled in vast crowds before 
Yildiz Kiosk to cheer him. The dismissal of 
the Palace favourites was demanded and granted. 
The exiles scattered throughout the distant 

I provinces began to return. Homes were 

gladdened by the sight of relatives and friends 
who had not been seen there, perhaps, for five- 
and- twenty years. The exiled Armenian patri- 

\ arch, Ismirlian, was restored to his faithful flock ; 

Fuad Pasha, who had been banished to Damascus 
for protecting Armenian refugees in the awful 

72 



The Twenty-fourth of July 



three days of massacre, was received at the quay 
by enthusiastic crowds of every race ; and the 
event which had earned him his fame and his 
punishment was recalled by a solemn memorial 
service at the Armenian cemetery, in which 
Christian priests and Mohammedan mollahs 
prayed together for the souls of the "martyrs 
of Liberty." 



73 



CHAPTER V 



A REVOLUTIONARY PLAY 

HOW it came about" is the title of the 
play. It had just been written by a 
young officer of the 3rd Army Corps, Kiazim 
Bey. It describes the history of the last months 
of the revolutionary movement. We were taken 
to the theatre by several members of the Com- 
mittee of Union and Progress. Among them 
were officers who had themselves taken part in 
the actions described ; and they told us — with 
a few smiles at the poetical licence of the author 
— that the account was correct in all essentials. 
One of these officers was Enver Bey. They 
interpreted the play to us in undertones as it 
proceeded. 

The performance was in aid of a public sub- 
scription to provide comforts for the Army, 
which has hitherto suffered terribly every winter 
from insufficient supplies. It was in every way 

75 



Turkey in Revolution 

a national occasion. It was under the patronage 
of the Heir-Apparent, His Imperial Highness 
Rechad Effendi. There, in the chief box to the 
right, sits Rechad's son, who, with his father, 
has been imprisoned in a palace on the 
Bosphorus for years. In the opposite box sits 
the son of the late Sultan Murad. Neither of 
these young men has been seen in the theatre 
before ; neither has been allowed, since infancy, 
any freedom of movement whatsoever. It is not 
the common people alone who are here to-night 
to celebrate the birth of liberty ! 

Suddenly a man rises in front of the orchestra 
and cries, in tones of thunder, " Yashassun 
Enver Bey ! " (" Long live Enver ! "). The 
audience rises as one man, and turns, a sea of 
white faces, gazing towards our box, exactly 
opposite the stage — turns as one may see the 
leaves of a poplar blown all one way, blown 
white, by a single gust. In an instant they 
catch sight of the young, neat-looking officer 
in his plain dark-blue uniform and grey cavalry 
cloak, and a roar breaks out, and a prolonged 
clapping of countless hands. He bows gravely 
right and left and sits down, muttering that it 
is all a mistake, that he is not the leader, that 
all his comrades have worked equally for the 

76 



A Revolutionary Play 

cause. It is a moment not to be forgotten. 
We are standing side by side with the man 
who, in the popular estimation, is the Garibaldi 
of Young Turkey. 

The curtain rises immediately on the room of 
a junior officer, Behalul Bey, with bed, sofa, and 
writing-table. The scene is in Macedonia. A 
soldier, his servant, comes in with a letter. 
" Ah, Hafiz ; a letter from home. Here is 
good news for you, my friend. Your wife is 
well, they tell me, and the boy growing fast. 
How long since you saw them ? Six years ? 
And you are supposed to have only four years 
of service. What a government ! " . . . A 
group of four other officers drop in, the day's 
work over, to take tea with their friend. 
They are "liberals" — in secret. The talk soon 
comes round to the great subject, the Cause. 
"We have talked too long — many have talked. 
Acts are wanted now, not words." "Yes," says 
Behalul, who is something of a philosopher, " we 
may never see the fruit of our labours ; but 
others will see it. It is time to move." A letter 
is brought in ; it is a warning ; spies are watch- 
ing the house. " Let them watch ! We are not 
such fools as to write anything down ; they'll 
find nothing." " I can't stand this Macedonian 

77 



Turkey in Revolution 

business any longer. At Doiran the other day 
a Bulgar band killed twenty of my fellows. 
What the devil is it all for?" "Yes; these 
bands are bad enough," says Behalul ; " but can 
you blame them ? No ; they've got a definite 
end in view — liberty — and they're going straight 
for it. It's awful, the crimes they commit ; but 
at bottom they're right, for all that. Those 
Albanians, too, near Castoria — it's just the same. 
What's the use of attacking the bands ? They're 
only the symptom of the evil. We must go to 
the root, the origin of it — that's what we've got 
to attack." (Loud applause from the audience.) 
" The men are dying like flies. The whole 
Turkish people will be wasted away if we go 
on like this. The morale of the troops is being 
broken down by this sort of work." " What's 
the good of all your talk," interposes one — a 
pessimist — " we are only soldiers ; how can we 
rouse the civilians ? Nothing will come of it." 
" What ! have we nothing to appeal to ? Here 
we are to-day shedding our blood to protect a 
government of robbers — and who are we ? We 
are the nation that fought with Mahomet and 
Suleiman — once the strongest in the world ! 
Yes ; and we are the men who have made and 
unmade Sultans — the men who fired on the tent 

78 



A Revolutionary Play 

of Selim when he rejected the demands of his 
army in the Persian War ! And to-day — the 
weakest State in Europe ; true patriotism, the 
fundamental virtue of a civilised people, is looked 
on as a crime by the knaves and lunatics who 
rule us. You say we can never mend it. I say 
we can. A Constitution, a Parliament! God 
will pay back the spies in their own coin one 
of these days. We shall see them run like 
dogs ! But, in hope or in despair, we are 
going to work on. We have sworn the 
oath!" 

They go, all but Behalul ; and the inevitable 
lady-love appears, a Greek, Victoria, an orphan 
brought up by Turks. " The love of a Greek 
and a Turk will be the symbol of the union of 
all the Ottoman peoples ! " 

A noise without. The soldier-servant is 
refusing entrance to some unwelcome visitor. 
He is beaten back, the door bursts open, the 
spy — another officer — bursts in with a file of 
men ; Behalul escapes through the window ; 
they search bed, drawers, curtains, for in- 
criminating papers — all in vain ; and the first 
act closes with a touch of humour, the spy 
flinging himself down with a heart-broken 
" Confound it all— I shan't get my promo- 

79 



Turkey in Revolution 

tion ! " The audience roars with delight at the 
unexpected but vivid touch. 

The second act is in a remote town of Asia 
Minor. Behalul just succeeded in escaping 
from Macedonia, fled to Volo in Thessaly, met 
and married Victoria (who embraced the Mos- 
lem faith and changed her name to " Hope "), 
and is practising law, disguised as an advocate, 
in flowing yellow robes, white turban, and a 
fine black beard. His real work is the forma- 
tion of a branch of the Committee of Union 
and Progress. His friend — the pessimist, now 
converted into a vigorous revolutionist — arrives, 
sent hither on some military duty. " So I've 
found you at last ! I saw you passing, and 
almost recognised you. I asked the governor 
if he knew the new advocate. He said he did, 
but you were a dangerous man — you talked 
rank treason sometimes when you were defend- 
ing cases in the courts. Then I knew at once, 
of course! How are you getting on?" 
" Slowly. I have got one or two members. 
But I want a lot more. Personally I'm all 
right. I wouldn't take a penny of the Com- 
mittee's cash — it's all wanted for the Cause — 
but I'm making a bit of money in the courts. 
By the way, what happened to my servant 

80 



A Revolutionary Play 

after I cleared off ? " " Oh, they flogged him 
and questioned him, but they didn't get a single 
name out of him." "That's grand. . . . You'll 
see one of my new friends directly, the local 
schoolmaster." 

The schoolmaster enters, a half-comic little 
figure, spectacled, elderly, and timid, but as 
"sound" as a bell. "If the people knew their 
rights the despotism would go to pieces like 
a house of cards. But they are so ignorant ! 
Ah, that despotism — its follies ! Here am I, a 
specialist in Mathematics. First the Govern- 
ment sends me to teach General History ; off 
again, and behold me a teacher of Literature ; 
and here I am, a professor of French, by your 
leave. And I a specialist in Mathematics ! 
Well, well, it's all the same to me — the only 
thing I teach them is the Principles of Liberty! 
But I am too weak. The government service 
takes all the fibre out of a man. I haven't 
been bold enough." "What does the Govern- 
ment open schools for ? Wouldn't it do better 
to keep the people in ignorance ? " " Oh, they 
open the schools to keep up a show of en- 
lightenment — to hoodwink the foreign consuls. 
But they take care to teach as little as possible 
in them." " Never mind ; things are moving. 

81 f 



Turkey in Revolution 

The soldiers are getting thoroughly discon- 
tented. We don't bully them either, like the 
old-fashioned officers. They love us — and they 
are getting to love liberty. The Revolution is 
coming, never fear." 

A banging at the door, and again a spy, with 
his men, bursts in, and the officers are captured 
and bound. " You traitors, I knew you were 
plotting all the time." "Oh, please . . . I wasn't 
here," squeals out the little schoolmaster, and 
the curtain falls amid inextinguishable laughter. 

The third act describes the court-martial. The 
two officers have been brought back to Mace- 
donia. One member of the Court is a liberal ; 
he comes in alone. Behalul's wife follows and 
implores him to save her husband. " The 
Court will condemn him, but never fear," he 
says mysteriously, "we shall save his life." He 
tells the secretary to say that he is indisposed 
and cannot take his place in the Court, and 
hurries out. The Court enters — old men, most 
of them shaky, red-nosed, vicious-looking carica- 
tures, whose entry provokes a storm of hisses 
from the spectators. They are the generals 
and colonels of the old rdgime, promoted for 
servility, not for merit. " We have wasted 
three days — it is time we condemned them. 

82 



A Revolutionary Play- 
Disloyalty must be suppressed. No half- 
measures." The prisoners refuse to sit or 
salute, but stand defiantly with folded arms. 
"How can you be disloyal to the Sultan, who 
has bestowed such benefits on you ? " " Ask 
the spies about benefits — not me ! I care noth- 
ing for the personality of the Sultan — I am for 
my country, against the tigers who ravage her." 
(Applause). " And your precious Committee — 
what good will that do you?" "It will do 
everything ; it is going to save the Fatherland." 
(Renewed applause.) 

At this moment bugles and hoarse cries are 
heard outside. A clatter of arms, a smashing 
of doors, and there breaks in, at the head of a 
company of infantry, an officer in the khaki 
uniform of the " chasseurs " — the uniform 
decided on for the revolutionary war, the 
uniform actually worn in the first days of the 
Revolution by the men who are now sitting at 
our side. There is no disguising it — it is Enver 
Bey himself; and the vast crowd goes wild 
with enthusiasm as the prisoners are liberated, 
the servile judges seized and hurried away. 
" We only did what Izzet Pasha did — have 
mercy on us ! " " Mercy ? What mercy did 
you show to the women who begged the lives 

83 



Turkey in Revolution 

of their sons, the girls who kissed your feet to 
save their lovers? You thought yourselves safe 
— you thought the Committee was a handful of 
exiles — you never knew the Committee was the 
Turkish people itself. Away with you ! " . . . 
They acclaim Behalul as the leader. " No, no 
— I am but a private soldier in the Cause. To 
the mountains, to raise the standard of the Con- 
stitution — and God defend us, God who loves 
justice ! " 

The play winds up with an imposing tableau 
— the revolted troops in the hills of Macedonia, 
the solemn oath, and a speech full of " liberty," 
and " fraternity for all," and " long live the 
Constitution ! " But the friend at my side was 
carried away, his explanations became less and 
less articulate, his French gave way under the 
strain, and to his feverish murmurs of " He is 
absolutely against the despotism " ..." It is 
perfectly patriotic "... the curtain fell. 



84 



PART II 



CHAPTER VI 

THE FIRST IMPRESSION 

I WAS at Constantinople nine months before 
the Revolution. Roused at the frontier, we 
saw our innocent shirts and boots rudely dragged 
out of our bags, our guide-books and novels 
threatened with confiscation, an endless vista of 
red-tape complications opening up before us — 
but fortunately also a recognised system of 
corruption, moderately cheap, by which a few 
judicious bribes could avert the threatened evil. 
Arrived, we found a city of night — spies in every 
quarter, communication with intellectual Turkish 
society impossible, St. Sophia inexplicably closed 
by some sudden whim of the Sultan, suspicion 
in every face, conversation even in the hotel 
interrupted by turnings of the head to see who 
was within hearing distance ; the words "liberty" 

85 



Turkey in Revolution 

and " constitution " expunged from all printed 
vocabularies ; bookshops and newspapers scarcely 
to be seen — a few French and Greek journals 
as uninteresting and uninforming as the Court 
Gazette; and at the same time rumours — 
rumours wild and vague on every hand, rumours 
of disaffection in the Army, of a liberal move- 
ment among theological students, of some 
mysterious upheaval destined to follow the 
expected death (from disease, of course) of 
Abdul Hamid, of preparations for flight among 
the corrupt and cringing camarilla of the 
Palace, of Pan-Slavist stirrings among the 
Russian people, and unknown developments in 
the Foreign Office at St. Petersburg — of things 
probable and things impossible, things desired 
and things feared. 

But above all, dominating all, Yildiz Kiosk, 
the Palace, four miles away along the shore of 
the Bosphorus, the home of the Sultan and of 
his favourites, the central bureau of the Empire ; 
with its spies, the most perfect intelligence 
department in the world, its private telegraph 
wires, its secret cypher unknown to the nominal 
Ministers of State, the puppets inhabiting the 
old government offices of the historic " High 
Gate," the " Sublime Porte " in the heart of the 

86 



The First Impression 

city of Stamboul — Yildiz Kiosk, with its agents 
on the remotest confines of the Empire, from 
lovely Ochrida in the recesses of the Pindus, 
to Arabia Felix, in the South, and the gloomy 
wastes of Kurdistan in the East. And gloom 
was the dominant note in the picture even here 
at the centre, though the sun glittered on the 
Bosphorus, and sank in glory behind the long line 
of grey mosques and white turrets and roofs of 
brown and red and gold. 

I was there again, four months after the Revo- 
lution. The customs officer roused us from our 
midnight sleep in the luxurious berths of the 
Orient Express, inquired if we had " anything to 
declare," and, receiving an answer in the nega- 
tive, politely wished us " Good-nigh t," and 
switched off the electric light. We were 
not the poorer, even by a medjid, and such 
dangerous revolutionary gunpowder as the Bible 
and The Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire, not to mention more frivolous literature, 
glided on undisturbed into the heart of His 
Imperial Majesty's dominions. 

The old turmoil at the station, the scrimmage 
of the Kurdish porters fighting for the travellers 
bags, was — well, not quite gone, but—confined 
within the rules of the game. There was a 

8; 



Turkey in Revolution 

chattering and a liveliness in the streets unknown 
before. There was happiness instead of gloom 
in thousands of faces. There was confidence 
in place of suspicion. There were new book- 
shops at many of the corners. There were 
newspaper boys hawking every kind of journal, 
Turkish, French, Greek, Italian, German, daily, 
weekly, or occasional. Every one was reading 
them — the very cabbies, waiting on the box of 
their broken-down little victorias, were drinking 
in the new learning — the knowledge of good and 
evil, of politics, of the things outside, of chan- 
celleries, Parliaments, democratic movements, of 
the strife of nations, of their armies, their rail- 
ways, their restless commerce, of all manner of 
strange amusements, of plays and entertainments, 
of causes cUebres, of the coming and going of 
the great ones of the earth. Outside the theatre, 
materials of one sort or another were being 
unloaded from wagons of the form that Homer 
describes in the Odyssey, drawn by great black 
buffaloes with white eyes gazing oddly but peace- 
fully at the sky. Within, Mme. Sarah Bernhardt, 
about to play UAiglon to crowded houses of 
open-mouthed spectators. 

But strangest of all, as we clattered over the 
uneven wooden planks of the bridge that spans 

88 



\ 




i 



The First Impression 

the Golden Horn, behold a procession of voters, 
marching to the sound of the national anthem 
played by a scratch band of drums and flutes, 
waving tall red banners which bear the crescent 
and the star in white, proceeding with perfect 
order, and indeed with some solemnity of gait 
and feature, to decide by their votes who shall 
sit as deputy for the sixth division of Constan- 
tinople in the Parliament of the Ottoman 
Empire. 

The word " overwhelming," robbed of its force 
as it is by too frequent use in the language of 
exaggeration, is the only one which can at all 
describe this first impression. A flood of new 
sights and sounds, of new ideas, rolls in upon 
the mind; before one is appreciated, another 
succeeds, and half obliterates it ; one has neither 
the power nor the inclination to reflect, to co- 
ordinate, to review the situation as a whole. 
That will come after a week or two. The effort 
of the moment is to snatch the fleeting pictures 
and take them in. 

It is the new order of things which seizes the 
imagination — to those at least who knew the 
Constantinople of former days. But this new 
order is seen in the light of the old ; it stands 

89 



Turkey in Revolution 

out against a background hardly less vivid ; that 
great background of the mysterious and vast 
city, half Asia, half Europe, its cosmopolitan 
turmoil, its infinite picturesqueness, the grand 
outline of low hills crowned with towering domes 
and slender minarets, the turquoise of the Bos- 
phorus, the forest of masts in the Golden Horn ; 
and, again, the "old regime" as they call it 
now, with its oppressions, its suspicions, its 
thunder-laden silence, its nameless cruelties ; and 
behind that, again, the atmosphere of history, 
the conquests, the world-shaking defeats, the 
Janissaries in revolt, the magnificent walls shat- 
tered by the Turkish invader, the long decay 
of the Empire of the East, with its legions, its 
great Church of " Holy Wisdom," its echoes of 
Imperial Rome, Justinian, Constantine — back and 
back into the earlier dawn, with the Greek adven- 
turers pushing out into the mists of barbarism — 
all that concentration of the memories of the 
human race, on a single spot, which makes Time 
itself seem almost a hallucination. 

That is the background which, a year ago, 
seemed more than enough for the brain to 
grapple with. And it is still there, insurgent, 
irresistible. It also has its flood of impressions, 
and it rolls up still, meeting the new flood, and 

90 



The First Impression 

the waves break against one another, lose their 
regular sequence in a whirlpool which baffles 
the eye, and dissolve momentarily in confusing 
clouds of spray. 

What is it that has produced this amazing 
change ? You talk to the men who have helped 
to bring about the Revolution. They may be 
members of the Committee of Union and Pro- 
gress, or ordinary citizens who have helped in 
secret to spread the sacred flame, who have 
longed in secret to breathe the free air, who 
have suffered, probably, from intolerable 
restraints, from imprisonment or exile, from the 
loss of friends and relations. You begin to get 
glimpses, vivid glimpses, into recent history. 
The extent of the horrors suffered by countless 
thousands of Moslems as well as of Christians, 
under the old r^gime y begin to dawn upon you 
gradually, incredible at first, driven at last into 
your mind by fact after fact, one definite minute 
personal illustration following another. The 
extraordinary growth of the revolutionary move- 
ment opens up before you ; the deliberate 
spreading of discontent among the soldiery ; the 
innumerable devices of a subterranean propa- 
gandism — the strange spontaneous co-operation 

9i 



Turkey in Revolution 

of a multitude of unconnected human beings, 
guided by one instinct, one spirit, and urged on 
by one system of universal oppression, crushing 
high and low with impartial cruelty and cunning, 
which made sedition, with all its dangers, pre- 
ferable to passive acceptance. 

Little by little you piece together the history 
of the fateful days of July — the whole conspiracy 
threatened with discovery ; the sudden resolve 
to stake all on a premature outbreak ; the rais- 
ing of the standard of the Constitution in the 
heart of Macedonia ; the telegram conveying 
the ultimatum to the Sultan, and the final 
collapse of a despotism deserted by its only 
possible supporters. 

And the men who struck this astonishing 
blow, who put the match to the fire? We 
hardly know who they are, but here at least 
are some of them. They are young men ; 
officers, barristers, professors, junior officials, 
doctors, landowners, journalists ; all men in 
the prime of life. They are modest, taking 
the whole affair as a matter of course, hardly 
conscious of the fact that they are the makers 
of a Revolution unique in history. They 
march gaily into the chambers of the Palace 
itself, without impudence, but without the 

92 



The First Impression 

slightest awe, as if it was the most natural 
thing in the world to feel at home to-day in 
the central bureau of despotism, which but 
yesterday could have sent them to exile or 
death, and would do it to-day if it had the 
power. 

We are witnessing an interregnum ; the 
Ministry is the creation neither of the Sovereign 
— who for the time is a roi faineant — nor of 
the Parliament, for no Parliament exists ; it is 
a dangerous and critical time, and it is well that 
the men who have been active in the Revo- 
lution should keep a close watch, as they are 
doing to-day, over the general conduct of the 
various departments. 

What of the personalities, on whose action 
and interaction so much depends ? Here is 
the Sultan, cowed for the time, and accepting 
definitely, as far as outward action is con- 
cerned, the position of a constitutional monarch ; 
the Sheikh-ul- Islam, spiritual head of the 
Moslem world, whose bold and prompt declara- 
tion that the Constitution was in accordance 
with the law of Islam, probably did more than 
anything else to make the Revolution a blood- 
less one ; the Grand Vizier, Kiamil Pasha, forced 
to reckon with the influence of his Sovereign 

93 



Turkey in Revolution 

on the one side and the determined popular 
demand for drastic reform on the other ; Prince 
Saba-ed-din, holding somewhat aloof from the 
reformers, doubtful if their aims are sufficiently 
liberal, fearful of over-centralisation ; the various 
Young Turk leaders, none of whom will admit 
that he is a leader at all, but many of whom 
are destined to play a great part in the re- 
generation of their country — all these are 
factors in the mysterious and shifting web of 
politics in the capital of the Ottoman Empire. 

We cannot pretend to single out as yet the 
dominating colours. It is not true that "the 
East never changes " ; that is certain ; but out 
of the East have come strange things, good 
as well as evil, and there are stranger things 
yet to come. 

***** 

Constantinople is under snow. 

Opposite our window, across the peaceful 
harbour of the Golden Horn, is the long line 
of walls and towers, where the conqueror, 
Mahomet II., broke through the inviolate de- 
fences of Christendom, and bore down the heroic 
resistance of the last Emperor of the East. At 
the tip of the "horn," to the right, is a vast 
expanse of Turkish cemeteries, a profusion of 

94 



The First Impression 

short pillars, leaning this way and that, each 
surmounted by a quaint little stone fez. And 
away to the left stretch the seven hills, which 
Providence, or imagination, has matched with 
the seven hills of Rome. On the furthest but 
one, the original site of the camp of Constantine 
before he took the citadel of Byzantium, stood 
the Forum, the centre of public business and 
private litigation. On or around the furthest 
of all, still crowned by the dome of St. Sophia, 
stood the Palace, the government offices, and 
the Hippodrome, where the chariots whirled 
past the shining goals, and where the inter- 
necine struggles of the "Greens" and "Blues" 
shook the very foundations of the State. 

Now, but for the few great monuments of 
architecture which still ride above the wrecks 
of Time, all that flaunting glory has crumbled 
away into an undistinguished, deliquescent mass 
of little houses, built mostly of wood, with thickly 
latticed bay windows — the badge of women's 
servitude — projecting from the upper storey, and 
threaded by innumerable lanes, too narrow to 
be traceable by the eye, even at this short 
distance. 

And to-day, the whole has turned suddenly 
white, buried under eight inches of snow. An 

95 



Turkey in Revolution 

odd, incongruous spectacle, beautiful when seen 
in panorama, but chilling to the spirits in a city 
that craves and enjoys the sun. It spells misery 
to the poor, for the Turkish interiors are abso- 
lutely comfortless, and the walls let in the freezing 
wind. Even we, fortified with thick boots and 
the goloshes which are the universal wear of 
the well-to-do in Constantinople, find one outing 
sufficient for the day. But the mass of the people 
must wade and struggle, with no such protection, 
through the drifts of snow and treacherous pools 
of muddy slush which impede the passage of 
the streets. And the homeless, masterless dogs, 
which are the scavengers of the city, huddle 
together for warmth, or fight angrily for scraps, 

or stand motionless, melancholy, appealing. 

***** 

But the supreme interest of politics is dominant. 
The elections are nearing completion; the deputies 
are gathering in the capital. What feelings will 
find expression among that unknown crowd of 
Turks, Armenians, Jews, Greeks, Bulgarians, 
Syrians, Arabs, Kurds ? A solid block of keen 
reformers will form the Centre party ; what 
further groups will crystallise — reactionary, 
nationalist, or other — it is as yet impossible to 
predict. The immediate future is full of diffi- 

96 



The First Impression 

culties, but the intentions of the leaders are un- 
questionably good. They aim at enforcing order, 
and at granting equal rights to all races ; and 
they understand that unless they can form a 
government based on these principles they will 
forfeit the friendship (now so highly valued) of 
England. The ancient hatreds and feuds cannot 
be appeased in a moment ; but there is hope ; 
education and thought have spread largely during 
the last thirty years, in spite of every effort to 
stifle them, and there is a considerable supply of 
young men who understand the essentials of a 
civilised state. War is the supreme danger. An 
armed conflict, whether successful or unsuccessful, 
is the one event which may conceivably set the 
old tyranny on its legs again. 

The populace is excited and expectant. 
Preparations for the opening of Parliament are 
proceeding fast. Many things are still uncertain. 
Where will the Parliament assemble ? In the 
Palace of Justice, where it met once before ; 
in the chambers where the dust has accumulated 
in silence for thirty years, whose doors have 
never been opened since — save once (so the 
people say) a few months before the Revolution, 
when they opened mysteriously of their own 
accord ? Or in the Dolmabakji Palace, a far 

97 G 



Turkey in Revolution 

finer building, but one whose situation, outside 
Stamboul and near Yildiz Kiosk, somewhat 
offends the rising sense of democracy ? 

And who will open it ? Will the Sultan 
trust himself, as he has never done yet, to a 
public procession in the heart of the city ? Or 
will he, rejecting this splendid opportunity of 
appealing to the hearts of his people and 
wiping out the hated past, abandon the duty 
to the Grand Vizier? Or will it fall (as 
some of the bolder unofficial reformers suggest) 
into the hands of the heir to the throne, 
Rechad, whose long imprisonment and supposed 
liberal opinions have won him the sympathy, 
almost the affection, of the people ? And the 
speech from the throne? What policy will it 
announce, what concessions to the urgent popular 
demand for drastic reform, what attitude towards 
the foreign complications which loom so large 
on the political horizon ? Will the Ministry 
fall? 

Anyhow, the Committee of Union and Pro- 
gress is confident in its power, prepared for 
any development, conscious of the difficulties 
which await the Constitution, and under no 
illusions as to the omnipotence of Parliament. 
No one knows with accuracy who are its leaders. 

98 



The First Impression 

But its members are known to be watching over 
every action of the Government. They have a 
definite aim. They are absolutely loyal to one 
another. The great majority of the deputies 
are distinctly pledged to the Committee's policy. 
The Sultan has just asked to be their President ; 
receiving the respectful but firm answer that 
there is no such office. Mysterious, but for 
the moment all-powerful, tried in the fire of 
persecution and not found wanting, it is this 
body which controls the destiny of Young Turkey 
on the eve of Parliament. 



99 



CHAPTER VII 



WHAT LIBERTY MEANS 

" T)AY the toll?" said a woman crossing the 
JL Galata Bridge. " Why should I pay the 
toll ? Have we not liberty now ? " " Is this 
what you call liberty ? " said an Albanian when 
the Young Turks condemned him to death for 
shooting a Christian. Persons " falsely repre- 
senting themselves to be members of the Com- 
mittee of Union and Progress," to use the 
language of the Grand Vizier, persuaded the 
people that there would now be no more taxes to 
pay. A small boy threw a stone at a foreigner 
driving in a motor-car. The foreigner rebuked 
him, and received the reply, " It is liberty now! " 
The foreigner gave him a box on the ear. " All 
right," said the impartial youngster ; " you also 
have liberty." The wildest notions prevailed 
after the Revolution ; the astonishing thing is 
that order has never been seriously disturbed. 

IOI 



Turkey in Revolution 

Debtors thought that liberty meant remission of 
debts ; labourers thought it meant a doubling 
of wages. Disgusted with the rotten and 
dangerous steamers across the Bosphorus (the 
property of the Palace), the public boarded them 
one evening and refused to pay the fares. A 
Young Turk officer energetically intervened and 
just prevented a riot. Next day a notice 
was posted at the pier. " The honourable 
public is requested to be so good as to pay 
the fares ; three new steamers have been 
ordered. — (Signed) The Committee." And the 
honourable public paid, and waited patiently 
for the new steamers. 

Public order was the first necessity. In Mace- 
donia a reassuring impression was produced 
by the execution of two Turks and an Albanian 
who had murdered Christians ; the impression 
has been so far maintained, and, though both 
the Greeks and the Bulgar Macedonians have 
some unpunished crimes to complain of, they 
do not allege the kind of outrages which were 
everyday occurrences under the old rdgime. 

The peasants were sick of the endless conflict, 
and delighted to be left for once alone. A 
year before there was wholesale emigration ; 
by the end of 1908 thousands had returned. 

102 



What Liberty Means 

Then, round the marshes of Lake Yenidje the 
fishing and basket-making industries were at 
a standstill ; now the people were back at their 
work. Then the prisons were crowded with 
political suspects ; now they were empty. The 
fraternisation of the hostile peoples, contrary 
to the expectation of most observers, did not 
disappear. It cooled down, of course, as time 
went on, as election programmes began to be 
discussed and divergent policies came into view. 
The various sections of the people have adopted 
an attitude, not indeed of enmity, but of what 
might be called mutual watchfulness ; and they 
rightly draw attention to every symptom, however 
small, of a recrudescence of the old evils. It is 
a time that requires more than ordinary prudence 
and statesmanship on the part of the Govern- 
ment. Let us hope that the Young Turks 
realise the imperative necessity of maintaining 
the good impression which their first actions 
produced. 

Even in Armenia a missionary could write 
in October from the Orphanage at Van, " For 
bloodshed and fear and race hatred are sub- 
stituted liberty, equality, fraternity. How incon- 
ceivably great the contrast ! How intimately 
all these things effect the condition of our work 

103 



Turkey in Revolution 

you can well imagine. . . . The wonderful 
change ... is almost as bewildering as it is 
beneficent." 

In Constantinople public order was almost 
unbroken. I witnessed the first appearance of 
the new police force, in khaki uniforms with 
revolvers at their belts. But during most of 
my stay there was none worth the name ; there 
had not been time to create it. The streets 
swarmed with people ; electioneering excitement 
ran high ; processions of different nationalities 
surged to and fro ; several thousand prisoners 
had just been released ; and there were persons 
interested in provoking tumult — they were 
universally regarded as responsible for a great 
fire which, as I saw from the ruins, was 
obviously started in at least half a dozen 
different places simultaneously. Yet nothing 
ill-omened occurred among this million and a 
half of cosmopolitan humanity, face to face with 
a sudden and stirring revolution. On the con- 
trary, the faces in the crowd were happy and 
contented beyond all previous experience. 
Ladies, who used to cross the road to avoid 
the rough manners and sometimes insulting 
treatment of the soldiers, found them inexplicably 
changed — become, as if by magic, courteous and 

104 



What Liberty Means 

obliging. It is a thing one would hardly believe 
were it not well attested. The crowd was 
curiously gentle ; furious drivers plunged through 
it — it melted away on either hand ; passing 
processions wedged it against a wall — it did 
not push back, but stood, with arms pinioned 
to sides, panting but amused, till the crush 
ceased. 

Is it not this singular docility of the Turks 
which has helped, more perhaps than anything 
else, to make the Revolution peaceable ? They 
bowed to the Sultan's will until it became a 
burden too heavy to be borne. Now they bow 
to the Committee's. Even the deputies who 
have gathered together from the remotest pro- 
vinces readily gave in their adhesion to the 
mysterious Committee, who were for many 
months the power behind the throne — who 
carried their whole "ticket," without exception, 
in the elections for Constantinople. 

If there were complaints against the Com- 
mittee the answer was immediately found in 
the recollection of the recent past. The Com- 
mittee, said the people, has destroyed the 
despotism ; the Committee has given us liberty. 
While we murmured in secret, they took their 
lives in their hands and acted. You ask what 

105 



Turkey in Revolution 

is the Committee? We do not know. Long 
live the Committee ! 

It all came so suddenly that the people could 
scarcely understand it. Why, men asked, was 
this not done before? "It was like drawing a 
tooth," said Fuad Pasha. " We writhed and 
groaned with the toothache, but we applied no 
remedies. At last we thought of going to the 
dentist. A moment, and the offending tooth 
was gone. And we wondered why we had 
given ourselves all this unnecessary pain." 

The triumph of the revolutionary cause was 
not stained by the deliberate shedding of blood. 
The most notorious of the Sultans favourites, 
Izzet Pasha and others, fled the country, and 
the property which they left behind them was 
confiscated. Others were placed under arrest 
to await legal trial, but it is probable that most 
of them will be quietly released. Some, who 
had enriched themselves at the expense of the 
State, compounded for their misdeeds by a public 
restoration of their ill-gotten gains. Only one 
of the famous wrong-doers, Fehim Pasha, the 
Sultan's brother-in-law, who, as Mayor of Con- 
stantinople, had made himself odious by his 
extortions and cruelties, and had been removed 
from his office at last on the vigorous initiative 

1 06 




From a rough broadsheet sold in the streets] [of Constantinople after the Revolution. 

AN OFFICIAL OF THE OLD REGIME. 
The Young Turks are presenting him with a bill for his peculations and misdeeds. 

[To face page 106. 



What Liberty Means 

of the German ambassador, paid the penalty 
which so many escaped. He was seized in the 
streets of Brusa by an infuriated mob, and 
ignominiously lynched. 

The orgy of emancipation was prolonged. 
The public was enjoying itself. 

The diplomats discussed the future with 
gloomy forebodings ; the journalists analysed 
the cross-currents and scanned the international 
horizon. But deep beneath the surface, in the 
hearts of the people, the great fact was the 
coming of liberty. It was too much to expect 
that they should take it all for granted, take it 
as read, and proceed to the order of the day. 
It was there ; it must be enjoyed, grasped, 
celebrated ! 

At home we deride liberty. We have got it, 
and we find that we need something more. We 
forget that this thing is the indispensable founda- 
tion on which all our progress has been built. We 
know from history — from 1640, from 1789, from 
1848, nay, from 1905 — that men have sacrificed 
for it all that they held most dear, have shed 
their blood like water for it ; but we read of 
their enthusiasm without comprehension, almost 
with surprise. At Constantinople the traveller 
found himself in the very midst of this strange 

107 



Turkey in Revolution 

enthusiasm ; found that it was not a historian's 
exaggeration ; saw it before his eyes as a 
magnificent fact. 

What does liberty mean to the Turks? It 
means many things ; chiefly, the lifting of a 
great weight of numbing fear. The highest 
was not free from espionage ; the lowest not 
safe from extortion. Among the educated 
classes there was hardly a household that had 
not some suspicious death, some sudden exile, 
to mourn and to remember. All this was now 
swept away. Men breathed freely. For the 
first time for thirty years they could talk, read, 
meet their friends, associate with foreigners, 
travel from place to place. " I have never 
lived till now," said a Young Turk to me. 

It was among the Turkish women that the 
general emancipation produced its most extra- 
ordinary effect ; but it was short-lived. They 
threw off their veils ; they came out from behind 
the closely-latticed windows into streets and 
public places ; they went to the theatres and the 
cafes ; they drove side by side with men in open 
carriages. The more ardent spirits held an 
open meeting in Constantinople, at which lady 
speakers demanded that the century-old shackles 
should be broken asunder. The thing was too 

108 



What Liberty Means 

novel to last. After a week or two, remon- 
strances began. The carriages were stopped, 
and some of the women roughly handled by the 
crowd. They felt, instinctively, that they had 
gone too far ; they drew back. The veils 
reappeared — perhaps not drawn quite so closely 
as before. 

The fine hopes and aspirations were chilled. 
It was a pathetic collapse ; perhaps the only 
shadow amid all the sunshine. The roots of 
social habit were too deep to be torn up by a 
mere political revolution. An impetus has been 
given to the slow process of emancipation ; the 
Young Turks favour the movement, but look 
on a rapid advance as dangerous ; more than 
this one cannot say. 

The Revolution, if successful, will make 
possible the growth of many good things which 
only time can ripen. It will open a way for 
progress, and all that progress means. The old 
rigime looked on thought and discussion as its 
bitterest enemies. We can hardly conceive the 
intoxication of the first sense of intellectual free- 
dom. It was a seething ferment of ideas. The 
company of foreigners was eagerly sought for. 
Young Turks were spending half the night in 
learning the English language. A student at 

109 



Turkey in Revolution 

the 6 cole Civile, who replied in English to the 
address of the Balkan Committee, had learnt it 
since the Revolution! John Stuart Mill and 
Herbert Spencer are household names in 
Turkey, though they are known chiefly through 
French translations. The stir of the Revolution 
will doubtless produce an outburst of literature. 
Many books, I am told, are being written ; they 
are not being printed, because there are not 
enough presses in Constantinople to print them. 
Walk through the new " Fleet Street" in Stam- 
boul, and you see the reason. But reading goes 
on apace. For the first month, so a bookseller 
told me, the increase was small ; " it was all 
hurrahs." By the second the sales were 
phenomenal ; it was impossible to meet the 
demand for books on law, philosophy, military 
science, travel, and a score of other subjects. 
Then the foreign complications came, and no 
one read anything but newspapers ; now the 
book sales were again advancing rapidly. 

If the whole work of the reformers were to 
be wiped out to-morrow, there would remain the 
record of six months' liberty, during which men 
could speak out and develop themselves and rise 
to their full stature ; and the cloud of fear and 
resentment and mutual hatred was rolled away ; 

no 



What Liberty Means 

and the wrongs of thirty years came to an end 
—and all this without the shedding of blood. 
Can we wonder that the fraternisation went on, 
that the banners waved, that the gay processions 
forced their way unceasingly through the narrow 
streets ; that the sight of Christian priests and 
Moslem hojas sitting side by side in carriages 
was a never-failing delight to the multitude ; that 
the ballot-boxes, draped in bright colours and 
watched over by little girls in white, were borne 
to and fro amid cheers and clapping ; and that 
this much-enduring people were by no means 
inclined to bring to an early close their first 
festival of liberty? 



in 



CHAPTER VIII 



PERSONALITIES 



HE most obvious fact about the Young 



-L Turk leaders is that they are young. 
It is a significant fact. This is a revolution 
of young men, more completely than any other 
revolution has been. Of the twenty or twenty- 
five with whom I made friends — and these in- 
clude most of the leading spirits — only three 
are over forty. One is only twenty. The 
average would stand at about thirty-two. As 
their character is an important factor in the 
future of Young Turkey, and as I had unusual 
opportunities of becoming acquainted with them, 
I will venture to describe some of those who 
most impressed me. Acting in the spirit of 
the Committee itself, I shall conceal some, at 
least, of the names. 

Here is Ali, a cavalry captain of thirty-five 
or so ; short and dark, full of humour, heartily 




ii3 



H 



Turkey in Revolution 

enjoying himself ; interested chiefly in tactics 
and military science. " I don't understand politics, 
philosophy, Socialism, and all that; it is not 
good for a soldier," he says. Here is Selim, 
an infantry colonel of the Macedonian garrison, 
grave and silent, immersed in the work of the 
new commission on the reform of the police. 
Both of the above are what we should call 
" Staff College " men. They wear on the 
collar a gold badge with sword, rifle, and 
cannon, signifying their knowledge of the three 
arms. 

The best all-round education, somewhat curi- 
ously, is found among the military and naval 
men ; for their course of study, such as it is, 
has been a complete one, whereas the teaching 
in the official and professional schools has been 
scrappy and badly organised, while those who 
have educated themselves in private have been 
subjected to the difficulties placed by a despotic 
and suspicious government in the way of ob- 
taining books or exchanging ideas. The naval 
men are the best English scholars. There is 
Mahmoud, with open face, fair complexion, and 
blue eyes, most naive of all, the butt of the 
rest, whose two great subjects are his admira- 
tion for English social life and his hatred of 

114 



Personalities 

Yildiz and all its works ; and Mustafa, some- 
what older, who has been a naval attache in 
London, quiet and businesslike, a working officer, 
filled with indignation at a government which 
allowed its ships to rust for fear of their guns 
being turned against itself. 

Then I recall Djavid, now a deputy for 
Salonica ; a professor of political economy, 
formerly dismissed from his post for talking 
too freely to his students, but now reinstated 
—a small, keen man, at once learned and 
practical. I recall Hafiz, an engineering ex- 
pert, who has studied wireless telegraphy in 
more than one European capital ; and Shemshi, 
the doctor; and Mehemet, the advocate. There 
are the journalists, too — Osman, bursting with 
ideas, now wreathed in smiles, now again serious, 
with the weight of all the world's suffering on 
his shoulders — and the face of a boy of nine- 
teen ; and Suleiman, who has served his time 
in Ali's regiment, athirst for knowledge, always 
alert, a Radical of the Radicals, who, though 
he has never been abroad, is equally at home 
in Turkish and French, and is rapidly acquir- 
ing English in his few leisure moments. He 
is to be on the staff of the new paper which 
is to expound the Committee's policy in French, 

115 



1 

Turkey in Revolution 

for all the world to read. There is Tewfik, 
with minute fair moustache and deferential 
manners, who is interested in archaeology, and 
has studied law and political science in Paris ; 
and Hafiz, foreign editor of - one of the new 
papers, irrepressibly voluble, reeling off inter- 
national politics by the yard. 

And there are men of independent means 
and position ; Nedjib, for instance, from Asia 
Minor, with black, grizzled beard, kindly eyes, 
and gentle manner, alive to all the difficulties, 
feeling that the hardest of the work is yet to 
come, but confident in the democratic character 
of his people and the great intellectual changes 
of the last thirty years. There is Sabat, a 
landowner, who has lived quietly in the country 
for years, deeply interested in agricultural ma- 
chinery — now suddenly emerging as a man of 
clear intellect, balanced judgement, and iron 
determination. What is put into Sabat's hands, 
say his comrades, is certain to be carried 
through. He, like Djavid, is a deputy for 
Salonica. More will be heard of him, if one 
may prophesy. 

I have omitted one whose modesty I cannot 
spare by an alias. Enver Bey has become 
popular by accident, he says ; in any case he has 

116 



\ 



ENVER BEY IN SALONICA. 



He is crossing a square in front of a Greek restaurant. He is the figure to the right, as you face the picture. He 
wears the khaki uniform which the Young Turk officers had agreed to adopt for the expected civil war. The 
picture is a snapshot taken a few days after the Revolution. The flags in the background, and the seller 
of newspapers, are typical of the new state of affairs. Like the other members of the Committee of Union 
and Progress, Enver Bey has refused to allow his photograph to be taken for sale, so that the picture 

possesses exceptional interest. 

[To face page 116. 



Personalities 

slipped into a niche in the Temple of Fame, 
and, with his rough, simple comrade Niazi, will 
go down to history as the hero of Young 
Turkey. He is a cavalry major ; handsome, 
neatly groomed, with black moustache turned 
up at the ends, and clear complexion. He 
neither drinks nor smokes. It is not long 
before you recognise, behind his very courtly 
and somewhat reserved manners, an essenti- 
ally statesmanlike mind. In the old days he 
was specially concerned with the pursuit of 
the Bulgarian bands. This did not prevent 
him from retaining a liking for the Bulgars, 
and after the Revolution he was appointed to 
negotiate with their leaders. The story of his 
flight to the hills in July, 1908, his disguises, 
his organisation of the revolt, and his trium- 
phant return to Salonica, is passing rapidly 
into a popular legend. What is more admir- 
able than his courage and promptness is his 
scrupulous avoidance of all self-advertisement, 
and his firmness in refusing the high place to 
which he might justly have expected to rise. 
He is going to Berlin as military attache, and 
means, while retaining his membership of the 
Committee, to devote himself to his chosen 
career as a soldier. 

117 



Turkey in Revolution 

The men of whom I am thinking refuse to 
speak of their exploits, and it is most difficult 
even now, to ascertain how the Revolution 
came about. They take the whole thing as 
a matter of course. One can hardly realise 
that, though we call the Revolution a " peace- 
able" one, hundreds of their comrades, men 
who strove — perhaps less skilfully — for the 
same objects, have suffered death ; that they 
themselves schemed and plotted, at the risk of 
their lives, for years ; that they expected, and 
were fully prepared for, a revolutionary war of 
six months at least, following the first out- 
break. 

I must not forget the older members of the 
Committee. There is Ahmed Riza, now Presi- 
dent of the Chamber of Deputies ; for twenty- 
five years an exile in Paris, earning his living 
by teaching, conducting the Mechveret, the 
organ of the Young Turk propaganda, which 
was circulated in Turkey through secret 
channels— a dangerous game, both for him 
and for his agents. In the long years of 
banishment he despaired again and again, as 
he told the Chamber of Deputies, of ever 
seeing the realisation of his hopes. From the 
first day of the Parliament, even before his 

118 



AHMED RIZA BEY. 

By kind permission of] [the Editor of the "Near East." 

First President of the Chamber of Deputies. For twenty-five years, as an exile 
in Paris, he laboured for the Young Turk cause. 

[2b face -page 118. 




3 



Personalities 



election as President, his tall, commanding 
figure, his keen face, with its neat grey- 
beard, and his businesslike, straightforward 
manner, dominated the assembly. His position 
as President does not preclude him from 
speaking, and he will perhaps be the strongest 
personality in the House. He is recognised as 
the Young Turk leader par excellence, though 
the Committee of Union and Progress does 
not, in theory, admit the pre-eminence of any 
of its members. 

Then there is Talaat Bey, from Adrianople, 
with his ruddy complexion and black moustache, 
his sweet smile, and his somewhat deficient 
French. They chaff him mercilessly for his 
burly figure, but all love and honour him. He 
is a man who has worked for the cause during 
as many years as some have months. His 
long service has earned him the honour of 
being the first Vice-President of the Chamber 
of Deputies. There is Achmet, a man of fifty- 
five or sixty, who started his career as an 
advocate, then went into business and finance, 
and is now a writer of some repute on com- 
mercial subjects. He is full of humour and 
jollity ; yet at bottom he is a philosopher, at 
times turning suddenly grave as he discusses 

119 



Turkey in Revolution 

the hope of some universal religion of benevo- 
lence which may unite the world. His demon- 
strative and affectionate manners show you 
that he is not a Turk. He belongs to the 
Dunmehs, a Jewish sect who, centuries ago, 
believed that the true Messiah had come, 
and rallied with turbulent enthusiasm to his 
standard. The reigning Sultan, much dis- 
turbed, sent for the alleged Messiah, and asked 
him if he could work miracles. The reply 
was, "Yes." "Then," said the Sultan, call- 
ing in the executioner, " I order this man to 
behead you. Can you prevent him?" "Yes," 
was the reply, and raising both hands on high, 
the Messiah exclaimed, " There is no god 
but God, and Mohammed is His prophet." 
His life was spared on condition that he 
should persuade his followers to share his 
conversion. Popular opinion doubts the com- 
pleteness of this abandonment of Judaism, even 
among the modern members of the community ; 
but they practise orthodox Mohammedanism. 

Apart from the members of the Committee, 
there are many older men who equally deserve 
the appellation of Young Turks, though they 
have not played an active part in bringing about 
the Revolution. Most of these are men who 

1 20 



Personalities 

were ardent sympathisers with the constitutional 
movement of 1876. The most distinguished of 
all is the present Grand Vizier, Kiamil Pasha. 
Throughout his long life (he is eighty-four years 
of age) he has never concealed his liberal 
opinions. Too important and useful to be put 
out of the way, he was sent to Smyrna as 
governor, a far less responsible position than 
his ability and character deserved. He has 
twice had to take refuge in a British Consulate 
from the agents of the Palace. When the Com- 
mittee made its famous demand for the Constitu- 
tion, the Sultan hoped at first to satisfy the 
agitators by appointing Said Pasha as Grand 
Vizier with Kiamil to assist him. This, how- 
ever, by no means satisfied the Committee, and 
they continued to press their demand. Kiamil 
took part in the ministerial council at which the 
question of granting the Constitution was finally 
debated and settled. He, together with the 
Sheikh-ul-Islam, strongly supported the policy 
of yielding instantaneously to the revolutionary 
ultimatum. Said Pasha held the office of Grand 
Vizier only for a few days. It could not be for- 
gotten that he had played a part in the overthrow 
of the first Constitution. Kiamil, as the man 
whose record was unstained, was appointed in his 

121 



Turkey in Revolution 

place. Since then he has held his post, though 
some expected that he might fall from office on 
the opening of the Parliament. The speech in 
which he described the measures taken by his 
Government won from the House a unanimous 
vote of confidence. There had been some mur- 
muring against him, based on his great age, and 
the question has been seriously asked whether 
such a man, even with the best intentions, has 
sufficient physical and mental energy to carry out 
the drastic reforms now demanded, and to bear 
the immense strain of work entailed by a period 
of transition and crisis such as that through which 
Turkey is passing. It is said, indeed, that the 
long hours of work are already telling heavily 
upon him. 

We had the honour of being received by him 
at the office of the President of the Council, and 
entertained at dinner at his private house. He 
is a small man, much bent with age. His eyes 
are downcast, and his small features, with the 
short white beard and moustache, wear an ex- 
pression of sadness and anxiety. He wears the 
frock-coat buttoned up to the chin, like that of an 
Anglican clergyman, which is the ordinary dress 
of all the Sultan's Ministers. 

Hilmi Pasha, the Minister of the Interior, is, 
122 



Personalities 

from the point of view of the civil administration, 
the most important member of the Government. 
He controls the Ministries of Justice and Educa- 
tion, as well as appointing most of the civil 
officials. He began his official career as 
governor of the Yemen. At the beginning of 
1903 he was appointed by the Sultan as In- 
spector-General of the three vilayets of Salonica, 
Monastir, and Uskub — a new office, created in 
pursuance of the Vienna scheme of reform, which 
had just been put forward, with the approbation 
of the Powers, by Austria and Russia. He re- 
tained the office until 1908, enjoying, it is said, 
the exceptional confidence of the Sultan. His 
first duty was to suppress the Macedonian rising, 
a magnificent but desperate effort on the part of 
the Bulgar population, which caused the Turkish 
Government to regard the Bulgar peasants as its 
most dangerous enemies, and to try to decimate 
them by every conceivable means. I had the 
advantage of a long interview with him in the 
autumn of 1907, and though his psychology is 
not easy to fathom, I formed certain conclusions 
which I think experience has justified. He has 
a rather narrow, intellectual face, with a slightly 
grizzled beard, and a very pleasant and courteous 
manner. His position at that time was an extra- 

123 



Turkey in Revolution 

ordinary one. It was his business to keep Mace- 
donia under the direct government of the Sultan ; 
but in doing so he was confronted with the "civil 
agents " of Austria and Russia, the international 
Finance Commission, and the gendarmerie officers 
of England, France, Italy, Russia, and Austria. 
By endless delays, by voluminous reports, by 
playing upon their disagreements, he was to 
prevent these persons, as far as possible, from 
accomplishing anything whatsoever. What 
official skill could do to fulfil this duty, he did. 
He was callous, but he did not rejoice in the 
cruelties he was compelled to inflict. If he had 
been the servant of the great Powers, with a 
secure position, I believe that he would have 
served them well. In the beginning of 1908 a 
new reform scheme was proposed by Sir Edward 
Grey in conjunction with M. Isvolsky, and it 
included the appointment of Hilmi Pasha as 
Governor-General of Macedonia, responsible to 
the Powers of Europe. It was not to be. Hilmi 
had to face a second revolution, more formidable 
than the first. His position, between the Sultan 
on the one hand and the Young Turks on the 
other, was harder than ever. He hesitated, then 
bowed to the inevitable. He acted with vigi- 
lance, moderation, and good sense, and by his 

124 



Personalities 



proved ability, combined with his reputation lor 
clean hands in financial matters, has won himself 
an honourable place, and made a favourable im- 
pression on the Chamber of Deputies. There is 
no reason to think that he will not serve his new 
masters as capably as the old. 

Of the other Ministers I need only mention 
one, Maniassi Zadi Refik Bey, the present 
Minister of Justice. He is the only regular 
member of the Committee of Union and Pro- 
gress who at present holds a government port- 
folio. They are very proud of him, and he came 
in for the lion's share of popular applause at the 
opening of the Parliament. 

The Young Turk movement is represented 
besides by many men in unofficial positions, 
who have grown grey in voluntary or enforced 
retirement, but whose secret devotion to the 
principles of reform has never faded. Some 
of them have held offices of more or less im- 
portance, but have retired from them years ago, 
disgusted with the degradation of the whole 
official world. Even in retirement they were 
constantly watched and spied upon, and those 
who might have lived on their private means 
have been compelled to adopt some nominal 
employment, generally of a commercial kind, 

125 



Turkey in Revolution 

lest they should be suspected of spending their 
leisure in forbidden intrigues. Many of them, 
however, thrown back upon themselves, have 
devoted their real energies to literature and art, 
to study and thought. Such men are well 
equipped to emerge to-day as staunch and 
trustworthy supporters of the new rdgime. 



126 



CHAPTER IX 



THE COMMITTEE OF UNION AND PROGRESS 



ITH the advent of Parliamentary govern 



» V ment, the Committee will take a less 
prominent place, though it will continue in exist- 
ence to watch the course of events, and use its 
influence, both in and out of Parliament, to 
secure reform. But between the Revolution and 
the opening of the Parliament — that is, from 
July 24th to December 17th, 1908 — its members 
played a much more important part. They had 
placed a Government in power. They now con- 
trolled its actions. One or other of them paid 
frequent visits to each of the Ministers, by whom 
they were treated with the utmost respect, and 
who gave them without questioning, and ap- 
parently without reluctance, an account of their 
stewardship. Every Friday, so it is said, they 
took tea at the house of the Grand Vizier, and 
gave him their views, if not their instructions, 




127 



Turkey in Revolution 

as to his doings in the coming week. The 
resources of the Government were at their dis- 
posal. They took us for a voyage on the 
Bosphorus, for instance, in the Admiralty launch. 
A story is told which is probably apocryphal, but 
which illustrates their supposed power ; and, in a 
time like this, popular stories are often the best 
evidence obtainable. A warship was stationed 
immediately opposite Yildiz Kiosk. The Sultan 
was indignant, summoned the Minister of Marine 
to his presence, and ordered him to remove it. 
" That," was the reply, " is impossible." The 
Sultan thereupon seized a chandelier and threw 
it at his head. The Minister then explained that 
the vessel had been stationed there by the order 
of the Committee. The Sultan reflected, and 
tendered his apologies to the outraged official. 

The Committee interfered in many matters, 
great and small. They settled the strikes which 
broke out in the early days of freedom. They 
appeased, as I have mentioned before, the public 
indignation over the Bosphorus steamers. At 
Smyrna, the mob took it into their heads to 
enforce the boycott against Austria by knocking 
Austrian fezzes off the heads of their wearers. 
The Committee published a placard stigmatising 
this practice as " inconvenient and unconstitu- 

128 



Committee of Union and Progress 

tional." The practice ceased. In such cases the 
notice was signed simply " The Committee." 

The evidence of the wisdom and caution of its 
members, and of their readiness to efface them- 
selves, is written large in the history of the last 
six months. They know very well that the 
people are accustomed to associate wisdom with 
age, that they reverence the grey beard and the 
solemn face. They have deliberately kept them- 
selves in the background. Elated by the extra- 
ordinary success of the movement which they 
had devised and conducted, they might very well 
have aimed at forming a provisional government, 
a kind of Committee of Public Safety. They 
might have demanded that one of their own 
most trusted and most vigorous members should 
be placed at the head of affairs. They did 
neither. On the contrary, they have taken every 
possible step to avoid becoming the object of 
public favour. The masonic system on which 
their organisation was originally based has made 
this self-effacement more natural and more easy. 
For some months they retained their head- 
quarters at Salonica, where they were originally 
established, not only because their main strength 
lay there, but also because any outward show 
of power in the capital might bring them into 

129 1 



Turkey in Revolution 

apparent rivalry with the Ministry. In Constan- 
tinople they have no office. At the bureau of 
the Skura-i-Umntet, their organ in the press, a 
secretary receives communications and deals with 
formal correspondence. They meet and discuss 
there, or at the Deputies' Club ; but the formal 
meetings are held, as occasion serves, at the 
house of one or other of the members. A 
temporary chairman is elected from those present. 
The decisions are still communicated by word of 
mouth to the members, as they were in the old 
days. 

The result of these precautions is that no 
popular demonstrations are made ; that the mem- 
bers are not troubled with unnecessary business ; 
and, what is perhaps more important still, they 
are not exposed to the advances of concession- 
hunters and others, who might offer to purchase 
their aid for a corrupt commission. Charges of 
corruption have been made in one or two 
quarters. It is certain that the Committee have 
been exposed to temptation on every hand, and it 
is of course conceivable that, among so large a 
number of members, one or two may be found 
who are prepared to sell their real, or more 
probably their pretended, influence. On the 
other side, it may be said that such charges are 

130 



Committee of Union and Progress 

certain to be made, whatever the real truth may 
be ; and that they are strenuously denied by 
good authorities, including high officials in the 
Ottoman Bank. 

The statesmanlike qualities of the Committee 
may be learnt from their conversation, as well as 
from their acts. They seem to be fully alive to 
all the difficulties which confront them. They 
admit that many of the men in office to-day are 
far from being ideal instruments of administration; 
but they point out that, in the nature of things, 
no one can as yet be found with administrative 
experience except in the ranks of those who have 
served under the late Government. Their policy, 
they say, is to see that those only are chosen who 
have shown ability and not yielded to direct 
corruption. For the future, the only hope lies in 
the education and training of an entirely new set 
of officials, and steps have already been taken at 
their instance to reorganise the official schools. 

They know, again, that the mass of the people, 
though they acclaim the new rdgime to-day, are 
not educated in the principles of free government. 
The work of propaganda, formerly carried on in 
secret and in face of overwhelming danger, will 
be continued publicly. The Committee, in fact, 
expects to become largely an educational body, 

131 



Turkey in Revolution 

organising classes in all the cities of the Empire. 
In Salon ica, night-schools on a large scale have 
been started already, and several hundred 
students are attending weekly for instruction in 
composition, foreign languages and the like, 
and for popular lectures on political justice and 
liberty, and the history of constitutional states. 
A coating to the pill is provided in the shape of 
an occasional picnic, or a visit to the play. The 
problem of women's education, too, is being 
eagerly discussed, though it would be permature 
to say that any proposals have yet been put 
forward for dealing with this thorny subject. 

The people, of course, are full of illusions. 
They are ready to attribute miraculous power to 
the Parliament. Not long ago they were making 
demonstrations with banners and speeches before 
the British Embassy, on a rumour that Austria 
was sending war-ships to land her boycotted 
goods by force, and that England was sending 
more war-ships to stop them. But both in home 
and foreign politics the Committee is alive to 
facts. Its members are not living in a dream. 
They do not expect the impossible. They have 
studied the position and strength of the great 
Powers. An instance of this is their attitude on 
the question of an alliance of the Balkan States. 

132 



Committee of Union and Progress 

They mean to work towards this ; but during the 
controversy with Austria they were unwilling 
even to talk about it, since Austria would be too 
plainly marked out as the Power against which 
the point of such a combination would be 
directed. 

It must be something more than statesman- 
ship, however, which has enabled this group of 
men to overthrow a powerful government with- 
out bloodshed, and to conduct the transition to 
constitutionalism without disorder. Perhaps the 
main secret of their success has been their self- 
effacement, their deliberate determination from 
the first to subordinate their private gain or 
ambition to the common cause. The part played 
by this characteristic in bringing about the Revo- 
lution I have already described. Since then it 
has appeared chiefly in the form of a modesty, 
perhaps not often equalled in the history of revo- 
lutions. I have referred to the fact that they 
have no recognised office. In smaller matters, 
too, they have abstained from self-advertisement. 
They have avoided being photographed, as far 
as they could, and no accounts of their individual 
performances have appeared in the papers. The 
first excitement has waned, and yet the spirit of 
conceit has not yet begun to show itself. No 

133 



Turkey in Revolution 

one has claimed any superiority over the rest. 
There are no leaders. The chief difficulty in 
ascertaining the history of recent events is that 
none of the Committee will relate the achieve- 
ments, either of himself or of any other member. 
In the course of our acquaintance I must admit 
that I tried, very persistently, to elicit some in- 
formation of this kind ; but though I often put 
a question in an unguarded moment, I was never 
allowed to receive the impression that any one 
of the authors of the Revolution deserved greater 
credit than the rest. " Yes, he did very well; 
he did quite as much as the others." " Yes, 
the work in Macedonia was very slow and 
arduous ; but those who were working in Asia 
Minor ran greater dangers than we." Such 
were the typical answers. 

I shall not soon forget the simplicity and 
earnestness with which Enver Bey gave me his 
ideas on this point. We were standing on the 
deck of the launch on which he and some of his 
companions had taken us up the Bosphorus. 
We were just returning to the landing-stage of 
Top-Hane. It was getting dark, but a lurid 
glow of sunset was still in the sky, and the 
turreted mosques stood out above the sea of 
darkened houses like battleships in a storm. 

134 



Committee of Union and Progress 

"We had studied other revolutions," he said. 
"We saw that, time after time, they had been 
wrecked by men who strove to put themselves 
at the head of their fellows, saying that a leader 
was the one thing needed. I myself had studied 
very closely the Internal Organisation of the 
Macedonian Bulgars. I admired it, and it gave 
us many hints. But I saw that its worst enemies 
were its rival leaders. We asked ourselves, 
Why have any leaders at all ? Working to- 
gether — that is our idea. We considered that 
essential. It was the way we succeeded." 

It is indeed this perfect co-operation which 
has given the Committee its immense collective 
power. It bound together a great number of men 
— perhaps 30,000 — by the force of one common 
determination. Though it is almost too much 
to hope of human nature that this spirit will 
continue unimpaired after the stress of persecu- 
tion has been removed, and the excitement of 
the time has waned, it has not yet disappeared. 
It constitutes the most hopeful of all signs for 
the future of Young Turkey. For men who 
can exhibit such a spirit, few things are impos- 
sible. Can they preserve it? In that question 
is bound up, perhaps, the whole problem of 
success or failure. 

135 



Turkey in Revolution 

Some will tell you that these people are subtle 
diplomatists ; that they discovered beforehand 
the things that would create on us, their guests, 
the most favourable impression ; that they 
laboured to maintain it, and deliberately con- 
cealed from us the facts which might militate 
against it. If this is so, they are certainly the 
most consummate actors. But I do not believe 
that a large number of men in frequent and 
casual intercourse, now together and now alone, 
could succeed in a deception so complete. That, 
in a general way, they wanted to produce a 
favourable impression, and that they laid greater 
stress on the facts which contributed towards 
it, is doubtless true, and is, indeed, natural and 
inevitable. But I could quote instances in which 
they expressed views with which they knew we 
were not in agreement Further, we had plenty 
of opportunities of correcting any false ideas by 
hearing the opinions both of other Turks and of 
foreigners ; and I am convinced that in what 
the Committee told us they were, in all essen- 
tials, straightforward. 

I am well aware of the ease with which, 
especially in the East, a foreign observer may 
be misled ; I know the charges which have 
been levelled at the Young Turks, and. I am 

136 



Committee of Union and Progress 

conscious of the danger of idealising the cha- 
racter of those whose work I admire. Yet, when 
I have allowed an ample discount under all these 
heads, and weighed the views of hostile or 
friendly critics, I cannot resist the impression 
that what has triumphed in this Revolution has 
been an extraordinary moral force. I believe 
that this has been one of those moments which, 
as history records, do occur in times of revolu- 
tion, when, under the stress of overwhelming 
odds, self-seeking and mutual suspicion have 
been consumed by a flame of patriotism, and 
men have devoted themselves to their ideal 
with a pure and unquestioning self-abandonment. 
That such moments must be transitory is not 
a proof that they never exist. They raise 
ordinary men to a strange height ; they write 
their record in material facts, in social habits, 
in political institutions. The effects of such a 
moral impulse disappear but slowly ; and even 
when its last visible traces are obliterated, its 
memory remains. 



137 



a 



CHAPTER X 



YOUNG TURK POLICY 



HE Young Turks, be their intentions what 



-»» they may, cannot shake themselves free 
from history. Let it be admitted that whether 
Islam does or does not teach political equality 
for Moslem and Christian, no Turkish govern- 
ment has ever granted it. The idea of justice 
in the minds of the Turkish people must inevit- 
ably be coloured by this unalterable fact. 

Yet the Turks have granted some privileges 
to the Christians which, from a legal point of 
view, display an advanced form of toleration. 
They have allowed them to form their own 
Churches, largely self-governing in matters of 
education and of private property, as well as of 
religion. These advantages, originally granted 
to avoid a too close contact between Moslem 
and Christian, contain great possibilities of de- 
velopment. The Christians have suffered in 




139 



Turkey in Revolution 

the past, not so much from legal inequality as 
from disorder, sometimes permitted and often 
deliberately fomented, from lawless persecution, 
and from the abuses of a corrupt fiscal system. 

The Young Turk attitude towards the Chris- 
tians, on the practical questions which at once 
arise, has been clearly laid down. In the Army 
they are to serve side by side with Moslems, but 
not in separate regiments of their own. The 
official colleges and schools are to be thrown 
open to them. The question of the primary and 
secondary schools is one fraught with danger. 
The wiser heads among the Young Turks do 
not favour the policy of making Turkish the 
universal language of instruction. They wish to 
leave the existing schools alone, but to set up 
better equipped state schools, where the man 
who wants the best training for his sons will 
prefer to send them. " We will make them 
Ottomans," they say, " by fair competition." As 
an earnest of better things the order has gone 
forth that the word rayah (originally meaning 
" cattle "), which has hitherto been applied to 
Christians, is to be erased from all public 
documents. 

It is the first aim, and in my belief the abso- 
lutely genuine desire, of the reform party to 

140 



Young Turk Policy 

establish order and secure the regular adminis- 
tration of the law. Further, it is beyond question 
that Western ideas of political justice have sunk 
deep into the minds of the educated class, since 
the ill-fated Constitution of 1876. These men 
have been silenced, but they have studied and 
reflected, and it is now their turn to act. 

The idea of nationalism, indeed, in its full 
modern development, they have not really 
grasped. But it is only fair to say that com- 
plete autonomy for the different nations of the 
Empire is a very difficult policy to apply. 
Some of these nations are inextricably mingled. 
Others are situated on the frontiers of kindred 
independent nations. In the first case, autonomy 
is impossible. In the second — the case of the 
European provinces — it would spell annexation 
or war. It is, of course, quite arguable that such 
might be in the long run the best solution ; but 
it is not compatible with the Young Turk ideal. 

The Young Turks claim, and have only suc- 
ceeded because they claim, to be more patriotic 
than the Sultan's camarilla, and to offer a better 
chance of maintaining the strength of the Empire. 
Thus the statesman of to-day in Turkey has only 
two alternatives to choose from. Either he must 
refuse to grant full national autonomy, and try 

141 



Turkey in Revolution 

to reform the Empire on the basis simply of 
personal security and equality before the law ; 
or, by granting such autonomy, he must risk a 
reactionary movement, and the restoration of 
the hated despotism. The danger of the latter 
course is vividly present to every Turkish 
reformers mind. On the other hand, the former 
course is full of promise. If successful, if even 
partially successful, it means at least a measure 
of prosperity and contentment for 20 millions 
of the human race. Whereas the violent dis- 
ruption of European Turkey could, at the most, 
benefit 6 millions, while it would plunge the 
remaining 14 millions back into the night of 
cruelty and turmoil. 

The Young Turks, however, know from the 
bitter experience of Macedonia the strength of 
national sentiment. They know that it must 
be conciliated. They are under no illusion as 
to the difficulties ; but they are prepared to 
undertake the task. They distinguish sharply 
between a Turkish, or racial, patriotism and 
an "Ottoman" patriotism. Side by side with 
the cultivation of national sentiment, they hope 
for the sense of a common interest and common 
pride among all the peoples of Turkey. As 
has often been noted to their credit, the Turks 

142 



Young Turk Policy 

in general are singularly free from mere racial 
prejudice, whatever evil they may have done 
under the influence of religious fanaticism. 

I was accompanying one evening a mixed 
procession of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, and 
Jews, engaged in a " manifestation," as they call 
it, before the British Embassy — flags, speeches, 
hurrahs, and all the rest of it. As we retired, 
a half-tipsy Austrian somewhat rudely accosted 
my Young Turk friend with the question, " Who 
are these? Turks?" " No." ' ' Who are they, 
then ? " " Ottomans," was the quiet reply. 

The general feeling of the Young Turks is, 
I think, this: "The old despotism has made 
life unendurable, progress impossible, our nation 
the laughing-stock of Europe, and the speedy dis- 
ruption of our Empire almost certain. Liberty 
of speech and action, government in accordance 
with public opinion, order in the provinces, are 
the supreme necessities of the moment. Every 
sensible man is with us. This is our last chance 
of putting things right. And we must do it 
thoroughly. If we are to survive, we must enter 
into the comity of European nations ; and we can 
only do it by adopting their political principles." 

From what has been said in an earlier 
chapter, it is clear that the Young Turk policy 

143 



Turkey in Revolution 

is not one of vindictiveness. During the critical 
weeks before the grant of the Constitution, the 
murder of certain persons was decreed by the 
Committee. These murders were deliberate 
executions ; and they may have averted blood- 
shed on a much greater scale. Since the 
Constitution, however, no one has been put to 
death for his support of the old rdgime, if we 
except Fehim, who fell a victim to the rage of 
the mob, and Ismail Mahir, president of the 
commission sent to Salonica to suppress the 
new movement, who was shot by an unknown 
person in Stamboul. 

At the same time, the Young Turks want the 
world to understand that there will be no tolera- 
tion towards any one who aims at restoring the 
old rdgime. They lose no opportunity of speak- 
ing plainly to the Sultan himself. Even in the 
midst of their congratulations to him after the 
opening of the Parliament, they took care to 
insert the sentence, "A system of government 
which permits popular deliberation is a national 
right in accordance with the teachings of history 
and the ordinances of the Moslem faith." 

The actual work of reform has only just 
begun. The Young Turks realise the immense 
obstacles which confront them, and have set to 

144 



Young Turk Policy 

work on sound lines. They see the need of 
employing foreign advisers. They are, of course, 
anxious not to lose control of any department 
of the administration, and this has given rise 
to the fear that they will not give a sufficiently 
free hand to the foreigners whom they employ. 
No definite complaints, however, have as yet 
been made on this score. The development of 
the country through irrigation, one of the most 
urgent reforms, is being reported on by Sir 
William Willcocks, in Mesopotamia, and M. 
Godard, in the Cilician plain. Two English 
experts are helping to put the Customs in 
order. An English admiral is to superintend 
the reorganisation of the Navy. The Army, 
which is based on German principles, is to be 
under the eyes of German advisers. It is pro- 
posed to apply to the whole Empire the 
gendarmerie system which the foreign officers 
attempted to set up in Macedonia, though their 
efforts were thwarted by the old Government ; 
and to engage some of the English, French, 
and Italian officers as inspectors. Arrange- 
ments are being made to send a large number 
of students to the various European capitals to 
study law, engineering, finance, and adminis- 
tration. 

145 k 



Turkey in Revolution 

The fundamental problem of economic reform 
is one of finance. M. Laurent, of the French 
Cour des Comptes, has been engaged to dis- 
entangle the accounts of the various departments 
of state, and to make suggestions. An inflow 
of foreign capital is recognised as an obvious 
and indispensable condition of the success of 
the new regime. While the Young Turks 
believe in a policy of government or municipal 
control for such public services as telephones 
or tramways, they see that new " monopolies " 
will have to be created, and that the hampering 
restrictions which now impede foreigners engaged 
in commerce will have to be abolished. They 
hope, as a result of the change of government, 
to get rid of the Capitulations under which 
special privileges are conferred on the subjects 
of other Powers, and the foreign post-offices, 
rendered necessary by the inefficiency and 
espionage of the old rdgime. But they see 
that evidence of permanent reform must be 
shown first. 

They think they can save money by stopping 
the corruption which has hitherto defrauded the 
revenue, and great efforts have already been 
made to do so ; on the other hand, this stoppage 
will entail higher salaries. Increased expenditure 

146 



Young Turk Policy 

will be called for, too, on the Army and Navy. 
It must be remembered that the Young Turk 
movement is a patriotic one, first and foremost, 
and that one of its best arguments was the 
feeble and disorganised condition of the national 
defences, coupled with the promise of great im- 
provements. For fresh revenue they look to 
the " monopolies " just mentioned, and an in- 
crease of the Customs duties. There are very 
few rich men in Turkey, so that direct taxation 
is unproductive and unpopular. It is accepted 
as an axiom that the mass of the people must 
pay; there is no " social question, 5 ' and popular 
protests are not anticipated. 

A word must be added about the foreign policy 
of the Young Turks. Their watchword is peace. 
They remember the consequences of war in '77 
and '78. They know that war and internal 
reform cannot go together ; that if hostilities 
broke out, the brightest hopes of Turkish re- 
generation might be suddenly and irretrievably 
blighted. 

Among foreign Powers, it is the liberal 
and constitutional countries of the West with 
which they aim at being connected. England 
holds the first place in their hearts. The in- 
fluence of Germany at Constantinople fell to its 

147 



Turkey in Revolution 

lowest point after the Revolution. That it will 
revive, in part at any rate, is certain ; for it rests, 
not only on diplomacy, but on the solid services 
which Germany can render. The late Grand 
Vizier, Ferid Pasha, used to say frankly that he 
thought the German, who spent little and worked 
hard, would do greater things for Turkey than 
the more popular but more easy-going English- 
man. To-day, however, the Englishman stands 
first. England's moral support at a dangerous 
and critical moment will not soon be forgotten. 

" We did not and do not expect too much," 
said a Turk of independent opinions, not a 
member of the Committee, who had once served 
in the diplomatic service. " We were delighted 
with even a negative help. You did not conspire 
against our constitutional movement ; that was 
no small matter." 

" But our Government used to be the bitter 
enemy of yours," I replied; " and the influence 
of the press was entirely an ti- English. How 
can your people feel as they do towards us ? " 

" Our people are supposed to be stupid," he 
said, " but I am not so sure. I believe they 
have a sense for the nuances of politics which 
you do not altogether understand. Will you 
believe me when I tell you that they never 

148 



Young Turk Policy 

looked on your country as being a real enemy, 
in spite of the diplomatic notes and the naval 
demonstrations ? They saw what was going on 
at some of the other embassies ; they saw that 
their diplomatic friendship did not always keep 
them from financial transactions in which Turkey 
was generally the loser. The English embassy 
was often misled, we thought, but at any rate it 
was absolutely pure. The people said to them- 
selves, ' It is not an invasion of pickpockets, at 
any rate.' These things made an impression on 
them. And when the Revolution came, they 
thought that the diplomatic friends of former 
times must now be disappointed, for they had 
lost their hope of a share in the inheritance, and 
secretly, if not openly, they must be against 
Turkey. We know that England is the country 
where constitutional government began ; we 
know that she is the leader of the liberal 
Powers of the West, and we want intercourse 
with her. If she will not send us her battleships, 
let her send us her ideas." 



149 



CHAPTER XI 



ABDUL HAMID 



ORMERLY it was only the foreign 



A ambassadors, and those specially recom- 
mended by them, who were privileged to witness, 
close at hand, the Selamlik, or weekly " church- 
going" of the Sultan. Even this, for strangers, 
required a series of formalities occupying several 
days. Unofficial persons were not admitted to 
the Palace at all, but installed in a small tempo- 
rary pavilion outside the gate. Of late years, the 
general public were totally excluded. In this 
hushed atmosphere of imperial secrecy, the 
gorgeous ceremonial, worthy of a Coronation 
or a Jubilee, was performed without intermission 
every Friday of the year. It was not only the 
troops of the Palace — the modern Janissaries — 
who took part in it, but from every barrack of 
the i st Army Corps, which garrisons Constanti- 




151 



Turkey in Revolution 

nople, detachments poured in from the dawn of 
day. 

Let this be counted to the credit of the Young 
Turks : they have admitted the public to the 
Selamlik. A small thing, perhaps, but every 
little helps to make up the account. There is a 
big enclosure close to the line of the procession, 
which is packed with a motley crowd of humble 
people, among them great numbers of women, 
whose love for sight-seeing, poor souls, was 
starved under the old rigime. The white 
turbans of many priests — if a hoja can be 
called a priest — are conspicuous, and there is 
the usual swarm of sweetmeat-sellers. It is 
as democratic as the Galata Bridge. 

The first week after the Constitution (that is 
the way they describe what is almost a new era 
in chronology) the photographers were admitted 
to the court of the mosque, and one of them 
secured the finest snapshot of His Majesty that 
has ever been taken. It is all a terrible pro- 
fanation, of course, from the point of view of the 
ecstatic tourist — the one who got in, I mean, not 
the one who was shut out ; most were shut out. 
But I do not think the Sultan can complain. A 
snapshot is better than a bomb. However, the 
photographers went too far. The authorities 

152 



Abdul Hamid 

kept a watchful eye on them, and at the opening 
of Parliament I saw one dislodged from the top 
of a stone pillar at the point of the bayonet. 

We drive out from Constantinople along the 
shore of the Bosphorus, accompanied by our 
friends of the Committee of Union and Progress. 
As we approach the Palace — a French villa on a 
huge scale at the top of a hill — we notice that 
the pavilion outside the entrance is absent, and 
without any formalities our hosts, in their plain 
frock-coats and fezzes, lead us in past a row 
of splendid officials. Osman, a young cavalry 
officer, in plain clothes for this occasion, marches 
jauntily ahead. The last time he entered this 
gate it was to demand the signature of the 
Sultan to the grant of the Constitution. The 
odds on his coming out again alive were about 
even. If there is just a suspicion of swagger 
about his step, it is perhaps pardonable. His 
perpetual smile marks his sense of the humour 
of the situation. But there is no want of due de- 
ference and respect as he conducts us up the stair 
which leads into the Palace, through a corridor, 
and into a corner room on the first floor, beneath 
whose windows the Sultan's carriage will 
pass. 

We have another companion whose presence 
i53 



Turkey in Revolution 

is significant. It is Mr. Edwin Pears, the 
veteran correspondent of the Daily News, 
equally distinguished as the leader of the 
Consular Bar at Constantinople, and as an 
author who has thrown new light on the history 
of the Eastern Empire. Resident here for 
more than thirty years, he has strictly acted 
up to his principles as an enemy of the old 
regime. Pressed by the Sultan personally to 
accept honours and decorations, he has con- 
sistently refused them ; nor has he even 
accepted so much of official hospitality as is 
implied in a visit to the Selamlik. He sees it 
to-day for the first time. 

The road of the procession emerges from 
the Palace just above us on our left, passes 
immediately below us, and slopes steeply down 
to our right to the small mosque — a conven- 
tional one, with architecture of the wedding- 
cake order — about 200 yards away. The troops 
are moving rapidly to their places. Next the 
mosque is a long line of cavalry, their sombre 
grey uniforms contrasting vividly with their 
white horses and the red pennons waving from 
their long lances — a stage army, of course, 
which the modern rifle has made wholly obso- 
lete for war, but magnificent for all that. 

154 



Abdul Hamid 

Nearer to the Palace a company of Arab 
"chasseurs " are the first to take their places; 
they wear white turbans with bright green coils 
wrapped round them, dark blue tunics, and 
baggy trousers, with long brown leggings. 
Another picturesque element in the picture is 
the Sultans Albanian Guard — big, uncouth- 
looking men, in uniforms which suggests the 
familiar dress of the Balkan peasant — white 
with black edges and stripes, the trousers tail- 
ing off into the boots through a network of 
thongs bound round the ankles. 

And here, most notable of all, are the infantry 
from Macedonia, in plain khaki. They have 
been brought up, one battalion at a time, to 
replace the household troops, who, always well 
paid by the Sultan while their comrades were 
starving, are suspected of being disloyal to the 
new Constitution. The transition has been a 
critical time, and something like a mutiny broke 
out in the late summer, when a detachment of 
the pampered guards were ordered to leave for 
the provinces. They were promptly surrounded 
by "loyal" troops, three or four were shot, and 
the smouldering insubordination was quickly 
extinguished. The whole length of the road, 
and the approaches on every hand, are soon a 

155 



\ 



Turkey in Revolution 

solid mass of soldiery, with a narrow path 
between the bristling hedges of bayonets. 

The procession to the mosque is the affair of 
a moment. The chief ladies of the Palace, 
packed in close broughams, thickly veiled, a 
melancholy spectacle, appear first, and drive 
slowly down the hill through the avenue of 
soldiers, the negro eunuchs, in frock-coats, 
walking beside them with the gait and aspect 
of mutes at a funeral. 

Then the Sultan, in a small open carriage, 
attended by a group of military and Court 
magnates on foot, while formal cheers are 
raised at intervals. Behind, the grooms lead 
two splendid Arab horses, ready saddled, in 
case His Majesty should prefer to ride home. 
His Majesty has never preferred to do so, but 
the successor of Mahomet and Suleiman, albeit 
he drives in a victoria, must observe the tradi- 
tion of more gallant sovereigns. While the 
service is in progress we converse, over coffee 
and cigarettes, with distinguished personages, 
above whom the Montenegrin envoy towers 
conspicuous in his national dress, a splendid 
giant with the face of the Hermes of Olympia. 
The return from the mosque calls us to atten- 
tion again ; the Sultan's carriage is coming up 

156 



Abdul Hamid 



the hill, and the magnates in their stiff Court 
dress are actually making believe to push it up 
the hill. The horses, a pair of fine English 
bays, seem to enter into the joke, and break 
into a trot, while the magnates pant behind. 
This is surely the heaviest burden which Court 
etiquette has ever laid upon the backs of its 
unfortunate votaries. Their flunkeyism might 
at least be dignified. 

From the room in which we stand, a glass 
door leads to a small open terrace with a balus- 
trade. Above this terrace, at a man's height 
from the ground, is a window at which the 
Sultan sometimes appears to show himself to 
the assembly. A few minutes after his return, 
it is thrown open, and he stands before us at 
a distance of a few feet. The grandeur of his 
surroundings is set off by an entire absence of 
personal display. 

It is a timid little man, not over five feet in 
height, who stands there, in his dark soldiers 
overcoat and plain red fez, the hands crossed 
on the sword. There is a cheer, and then he 
beckons to his Master of the Ceremonies — a 
courteous old gentleman in a frock-coat, who 
would make an ideal king — and leaning down 
across the window-sill speaks a few low words 

157 



Turkey in Revolution 

in his ear. We learn that his Majesty desires 
to receive the members of the Balkan Com- 
mittee. 

It is unexpected and a little startling. This is 
the man whose rule we have attacked for 
years, whose crimes have made him the 
modern rival of the Emperor Commodus and 
the Borgias of Romagna. But a moments 
reflection overcomes the first instinct of dis- 
gust. This is the man whom the Young 
Turks, in the plenitude of their power, have 
thought fit to retain as the Sovereign of 
the new constitutional state — that constitutional 
state to which we have come to do honour, 
and which, if we salute it at all, we should 
surely salute openly and formally. We only 
stipulate, to remove all possible misapprehension, 
that we shall be accompanied by the four 
members of the Committee who are with us. 

The Master of the Ceremonies leads us 
through a narrow corridor, a group of English 
tourists and politicians, including three ladies, 
perhaps the oddest party of guests which has 
ever penetrated, under official escort, into the 
recesses of Yildiz Kiosk. We are ranged in 
a line along the side of a narrow ante-room. 
The Master of the Ceremonies retires, and 

158 




By kind permission of] [the Editor of the " Illustrated London News." 

THE BALKAN COMMITTEE'S DELEGATES RECEIVED BY THE SULTAN. 

The Sultan is shown addressing the delegates. He should be wearing a military overcoat and sword. 
Behind him is Galib Pasha, the Master of the Ceremonies. On the left of the group is Mr. Noel 
Buxton, the Chairman of the Balkan Committee ; on the right, some of the members of the 
Committee of Union and Progress. The scene typifies the changed attitude of those who have 
formerly attacked the Sultan's Government on grounds of humanity. As a result of the Revolution, 
he has become, for the present at least, the mere figure-head of a constitutional state. 



[To face page 159. 



Abdul Hamid 

in a moment reappears through a door on our 
left, which he holds open for the Sultan to 
enter. But for his low bows and genuflexions 
— the Turkish salute symbolises picking up 
dust from the ground, and placing it on your 
head — a stranger would have thought him 
the Sultan, and the little old man in uniform, 
with his bent head, a barbarian bodyguard. 
He presents our chairman, who stands on the 
left of the line, to the little old man, whose 
Turkish phrases he interprets, with literal 
precision, into French. 

Our chairman duly enlarges on our pleasure 
at coming here, at the invitation of the Com- 
mittee of Union and Progress, to pay our 
respects to the head of a constitutional Govern- 
ment. If the emphasis is a little unkind, the 
Sultan, at any rate, shows no sign of thinking 
so, and, like a wise man, makes a virtue of 
necessity. He also is pleased at our coming, 
and hopes that Turkey, following the policy of 
the Committee of Union and Progress, will 
continue to enjoy the friendship of our country. 
He shakes hands with each of us in turn ; 
salutes our Turkish companions ; congratulates 
one of them on coming to Stamboul as deputy 
for Salonica ; and withdraws as he came. 

159 



Turkey in Revolution 

We have looked face to face on the man 
of blood. If we have not looked into his 
eyes, that is because the eyelids droop with 
the lassitude of old age (though he is but 
64), and the head leans forward from be- 
tween the high shoulders — weighed down, as 
some allege, by the shirt of mail which he 
wears. You would think him a man oppressed 
with weariness rather than seared with crime. 
But it is no common face. The big hooked 
nose, the grey beard dyed brown, the high 
forehead, narrowed to the point of deformity, 
and emphasised by the fez set back on the 
crown of the head, suggest something of the 
character of this extraordinary man ; without 
education, consumed with a passion of personal 
fear which has become an ingrained habit 
dominating his life, his whole intellectual force 
concentrated on that one art of intrigue which, 
gradually developing by experience, and aided 
by the telegraph and the railway, enthroned 
him, until yesterday, in the centre of the 
most triumphantly complete despotism that the 
world has ever seen. 

That vast design is shattered, and it is almost 
inconceivable that the pieces should ever come 
together again. What is the place, in the 

160 



Abdul Hamid 



Turkey of the future, of the little old man, 
and his Palace, and his weekly visit to church ? 
That his removal has been considered and 
discussed may be assumed as matter of course. 
But the decision has been in his favour. Any- 
thing that might provoke a popular reaction 
must be avoided. His person commands vene- 
ration, and so long as the de facto government 
remains outside his control, he will, in all 
probability, be its figure-head. Personally, he 
is, for the moment, safer than ever ; and the 
complete set of disguises for the purpose of 
flight, which are said to have been discovered 
in the Palace after the Revolution, will doubtless 
remain undisturbed in the keeping of the 
Master of the Robes. 

Can the Sultan, after thirty years of govern- 
ment, shake himself free from his old habits? 
He is believed by many Turks to be a naturally 
cruel man, and more than one gruesome tale 
is told to prove it. Perhaps the most reasonable 
supposition is that the fear which has grown 
upon him for so many years, working upon 
an ignorant mind, has driven him into excesses 
from which, as a private individual, he would 
have recoiled in horror. Whatever his tastes 
in this direction may be, he has now but few 

161 L 



Turkey in Revolution 

opportunities of indulging them. Some think, 
however, that he does find opportunities of em- 
ploying his skill for intrigue, and that he is 
ready, if the chance arrives, to encourage the 
reactionary elements, whether at home or abroad, 
through some sort of secret correspondence. 
This is an inference from past facts rather 
than from present evidence ; but the policy of 
retaining him as a constitutional monarch 
certainly involves and justifies an excep- 
tionally close vigilance. 

Now that he occupies that great position, 
and occupies it by the consent of his subjects, 
it is sometimes said that a veil ought to be 
drawn over his history and character, and 
that nothing should be said which might in 
any way discredit his person. This is a 
view which is held by foreigners rather than 
by Turks. Nothing that I have said in these 
pages approaches in outspokenness to what 
is habitually said in Turkey itself. His claim 
to the Khalifate, it must be remembered, is 
regarded by most educated Turks as technically 
invalid, since he fulfils neither of the essential 
conditions — an elective title, and membership of 
the Prophets tribe, the Koreish. When one 
hears the familiarity with which he is described 

162 



Abdul Hamid 



in conversation, or referred to in the theatre, one 
sometimes wonders whether the real spirit of 
democracy or republicanism is not at least as 
deeply rooted in the East as in the West. 

This familiarity, however, does not by any 
means always take the form of condemnation. 
Since the Revolution, and above all since the 
opening of Parliament, the success with which 
the Sultan has played his new part has deeply 
impressed the people. They could hardly 
believe that he would drive through the streets 
to open the Parliament ; they were more 
than delighted when he did. Since then, in 
an interview with the President and Vice- 
President of the Chamber, he expressed the 
minutest interest in the arrangements at the 
Parliament House, and offered to provide, 
pending the construction of a new and more 
suitable building, a lift to save the aged 
senators and deputies the fatigue of walking 
up the stairs! At a dinner which he gave 
to the deputies, he so impressed his guests by 
the ease and (it is whispered) even the jocu- 
larity of his conversation, that they ended by 
kissing his hand, a proceeding for which they 
were solemnly rebuked by the Press. Is he 
merely clever, as clever at the new game as 

163 



Turkey in Revolution 

the old? Or has he been surprised, pleased, 
moved, by the success of the new departure, 
and the increased comfort and safety which 
he now experiences? Has there occurred — 
in the mind of the monarch himself — the 
strangest revolution of all? 

Yildiz Kiosk will not remain altogether as it 
is. Doubtless the Sultans fear of dynamos, 
which he conceives as a species of dynamite, 
will be indulged so long as he lives, and the 
engines for the electric light will still be worked 
all night long, to avoid the necessity of accumu- 
lators. But the horses in the vast stables are 
being sold off; the aides-de-camp are being 
reduced to one-tenth of their former number ; 
the Palace troops will be replaced by a smaller 
number of battalions of approved " loyalty " ; 
the dinners will have to be served somehow 
by considerably less than the four hundred 
cooks who have hitherto infested the kitchens ; 
and the harem will be severely curtailed in 
numbers. Finance will have her ugly finger 
in the pie. The Civil List has been fixed at a 
moderate figure. 

And the Selamlik? The Young Turks talk 
of it with some contempt. It is undemocratic ; 
it concentrates all the glory on the Palace. It 

164 



Abdul Hamid 



is degrading for the troops ; they are going to 
give them something better to do than "eyes 
right — eyes left " ; the Army, which the people 
love, is going to be a real army, not a sham. 
And, above all, it is a waste of money. No 
doubt the thing will be done, but it will be 
done on a more modest scale. It is no ques- 
tion of abolishing an old-established popular 
show. What good did the people ever get 
out of these ridiculous marchings and counter- 
marchings, these prescribed and regulated 
cheers, the putting on and putting off of the 
full-dress uniform and the medals and the 
decorations? The net result of the whole 
affair was a little more drill for the soldiers, 
a little more display for the generals, some 
ecstatic " word-pictures " from the pens of a 
few tourists, and the private glorification of a 
single old man. 



165 



1 



CHAPTER XII 



THE SHEIKH-UL-ISLAM 

I WILL not commit myself to any of the 
current descriptions of the Sheikh-ul-Islam 
and his office. To the mind of the late Canon 
MacColl, the dignified and courteous old gentle- 
man whom, by the courtesy of a friend, I had 
the opportunity of visiting at his office, was a 
veritable bugbear. He was the power behind 
the throne. No matter how well-intentioned 
the reigning Sultan might be, here was this 
" head of Islam," a species of secret Pope, 
always in the background, keeping him up to 
the mark, so to speak, by insisting on the strict 
observance of a law before which all Christians 
were as cattle. The substance of Canon 
MacColl's lifelong attack on the Sultans 
r'egime was undoubtedly correct ; but it may be 
questioned whether his reading of the Sheikh's 
position was in accordance with the facts. 

167 



Turkey in Revolution 

There is no good reason to doubt the truth 
of the account which the Sheikh himself gave 
us at our interview with such frankness and 
charm, though many matters which politeness 
forbade us to investigate further were of course 
left unexplained. 

We were a party of six, including an Armenian 
gentleman who had known the Sheikh-ul-Islam 
for many years. We drove up to a building 
near the Suleimanyeh mosque, a government 
office both in appearance and in fact. For 
whatever else the Sheikh is or is not, he is 
certainly a member of the Government, holding 
the portfolio of the Minister of Public Worship. 
He does not change with the rest of the 
Ministry, but otherwise he occupies the same 
position, and at the opening of the new Parlia- 
ment he walked in with his colleagues, his long 
white robe and splendid yellow turban con- 
trasting strikingly with the Civil Service 
uniform, gold embroidery and green sashes, 
of the others. 

The usual crowd of attendants ushered us into 
a stuffy waiting-room, whence after a few minutes 
we were led into the Sheikh's presence. He 
stood in the middle of a large square room, 
empty save for a stove and a few low seats 

168 



The Sheikh-ul-Islam 

against the wall, but commanding a fine view 
of the Golden Horn. About sixty years of 
age, with grizzled beard and moustache and 
healthy brown complexion, erect and well-pro- 
portioned, dressed in white turban and long 
mouse-grey mantle lined with brown fur, he 
welcomed us with a benignity and sweetness of 
manner, the impression of which deepened 
throughout the whole of our conversation. 
He led us to a corner seat and sat down 
with the right leg crossed under the left, one 
slipper of saffron-coloured leather resting on the 
ground. The attitude showed a little of his 
bright embroidered tunic, and the tight-fitting 
trousers, of the same material as the mantle. 

He spoke in Turkish, though he reads French, 
and is well acquainted, through that language, 
with the chief books of English literature. His 
Armenian friend put our questions, and inter- 
preted his replies. So expressive, however, 
were his gestures that the interpreter's task 
was easy. Not that he moved much ; but the 
restrained motions of his hands, the bending 
forward of the body, the wide and perfectly 
arched eyebrows, mobile as those of an actor, 
and above all his eyes, with their full, steady 
gaze, occasionally almost eclipsed by an in- 

169 



Turkey in Revolution 

tensely humourous smile, suggested half at least 
of what he was saying. 

" The Constitution of to-day," he began, after 
the first compliments had been exchanged, and 
while the coffee and cigarettes were being 
handed round to us — " the Constitution of to- 
day is a different thing altogether from the 
Constitution of 1876. That was a sham; its 
authors did not mean it to last. This is a 
reality. The people are ready for it ; it will 
remain." 

" But is a real constitutional government 
permitted by the law of Islam ? " 

"Permitted? It is more than permitted. 
The law of Islam is more liberal than the 
Constitution itself." 

"Then the influence of the Church will be 
in its favour? " 

" Certainly. Our law, rightly interpreted, is 
in accordance with the principles of representa- 
tive government. The wisest men, chosen by 
the people, are to direct the ruler, and if he 
rules without their consent he is going beyond 
his power. I go further, and say that, now that 
this principle has been embodied in the law of 
the Constitution, that law itself is included in 
the law of Islam. It becomes binding upon 

170 



The Sheikh-ul-Islam 

those who profess Islam. Especially those who 
are called to lead, our ulema, are bound to 
help actively in carrying out the Constitution." 

I recall, as a commentary on this statement, 
that the Sheikh, during the weeks following the 
Revolution, arranged for the most liberal of the 
mollahs to preach in the principal mosques. 
In one case two old men among the hojas 
(the general name for priests) rose up among 
the congregation and protested against what 
they considered the false doctrine. There was 
a scuffle between them and the hearers ; one or 
two knives were drawn. They were summoned 
to appear before the ecclesiastical court, and 
condemned for, as we should say, brawling. The 
Sheikh's words are bold ; it is too much to say 
that they will be accepted without protest, espe- 
cially in the remoter provinces. From Mossul 
on the Tigris, the story comes of an old 
mollah who hears that equality is to be 
granted to the Christians, and exclaims, " Then 
this is the end of Islam ! " With such ominous 
signs in our thoughts, we turn to this question 
of equality, the main practical point at issue. 
Here, too, the Sheikh is firm and definite. 

"The law of Islam enjoins equality — not that 
the people can regard a Moslem as in every way 

171 



Turkey in Revolution 

the same as a Christian ; but political equality, 
equality before the law, we are bound to 
grant." 

" But does not history show that this equality 
has been granted but seldom ? " 

" Yes, there is truth in that. In every religion 
there is the spirit of fanaticism, and that 
fanaticism may be used by a bad government, 
just as it may be prevented by a good one. 
Yes, . certainly you may appeal to history. 
But " — and the eyelids close up in that gentle 
but half-satirical smile — ' ' have not we also our 
appeal to history ? I have heard of Christian 
nations putting their captives to the sword. I 
think I have read somewhere — have I not ? — 
of the Inquisition in Spain." He listens, still 
with his slow smile, to the interpreter. Then 
he becomes grave again. " Yes ; I know it 
well. Every religion has its fanatics. These 
deeds are not dictated by your religion ; they 
are repugnant, I know, to the pure spirit of 
Christ. And we, too — may we not say the 
same of our sad story of fanaticism?" 

The Christian interviewers change the sub- 
ject. We turn to the position of our host in 
the Moslem world — a delicate topic which one 
must not pursue too far. We are anxious to 

172 



The Sheikh-ul-Islam 



know his thoughts about the great heretical 
section of Islam, the Shiahs of Persia, who 
have degraded the pure, cold theism of the 
Sunnis, and introduced something of the union 
of the human and divine into their reverence 
for Ali, and their passionate mourning for the 
death of Hussein. What does he think of the 
sects of doubtful orthodoxy — the Rufai and 
the Mevlevi, with their ecstasies of crying and 
dancing, whom tourists go to see at Con- 
stantinople under the name of the " howling " 
and " dancing" Dervishes; the Bektashi, with 
their emphasis on the spiritual, and their 
sympathy with other creeds? 

' All these are of us," he replies simply. 
" True, there are disagreements ; but no deep 
gulf divides us. There is even a sense in 
which our communion extends more widely 
still ; a sense in which whosoever says 1 God 
is one,' whosoever divides not the essence into 
separate persons, is a true believer." 

" We are all, then, good Moslems ? " says 
our companion ; and the Sheikh is silent, 
neither denying nor affirming, but with the 
same slow smile upon his broad, dignified face. 

Our companion wants to clear up one point 
before we go. The Shiahs are one with the 

173 



Turkey in Revolution 

rest of Islam ; but do they recognise the 
Sheikh as their head ? It is an awkward 
question ; but the Sheikh is equal to it. He 
is a diplomatist. 

" We do not think of such things," he 
answers slowly and thoughtfully. " You must 
remember that Islam is a democratic religion. 
We have no priests, properly so-called. We 
ascribe no sacerdotal power to the ministers 
of our Church. We have no hierarchy. I 
may know more than the poorest believer, but 
I am not above him in authority. No ; I am 
lord neither of the Shiahs, nor of the Sunnis." 

And we rise, baffled by the inscrutable old 
man, and he shakes us warmly by the hand, 
professing his long attachment to England, 
and his hope, his earnest hope, that we may 
draw together, and that the old tension 
between us may never return, now that the 
prospects of liberty in Turkey are so bright, 
and that we, the friends of long ago, have 
begun to understand one another once more. 
He says expressly that he hopes we will make 
known his views ; that we will tell the English 
public about the real Islam. And so he bids 
us goodbye. 

What is the meaning of it all ? Who and 
174 



The Sheikh-ul- Islam 



what is this mysterious personage, who speaks 
to us like a grandfather, who is so friendly 
and so simple and apparently so genuine, and 
who speaks such smooth words? Did he 
speak the same words about the religion of 
Islam under the old Hamidian regime, crying 
peace when there was no peace ? Had he the 
power to prevent the evil, and did he refrain 
from using it? Can this be the bugbear of 
Canon MacColl, masking his priestly ferocity 
under a garb of gentleness? 

One thing is certain, and must be set down 
to his credit. It is largely due to this man 
that the Revolution was bloodless. When the 
Committee's ultimatum reached the Sultan, all 
the possibilities of the desperate situation were 
eagerly considered by the Council of Ministers. 
Things were looking bad for the despotism ; 
yet, if the official interpreter of the Sacred 
Law could have been prevailed on to accuse 
the rebels of a breach of that law, all might 
yet be saved. Against men branded with the 
charge of impiety it might be easy to raise 
up a popular reaction ; to stir the mob of Stam- 
boul, to appeal to the Arabs of the Hedjaz 
and the Yemen, to drive the fierce Albanians, 
in spite of the Committee's tampering, down 



Turkey in Revolution 

from their hill-fortresses upon the plains of 
Macedonia. I do not believe that, if the 
Sheikhs momentous decision had gone against 
the liberal movement, it would have crushed 
the Revolution. But it would have ushered in 
the Revolution in a dawn of sanguinary con- 
flict, and left behind it a legacy of hatred and 
danger. The Sheikh did not hesitate ; he did 
not compromise ; he came out boldly with his 
decision that liberalism and the Constitution 
were in accordance with the law of Islam ; 
and the Sultan gave way. 

This decision is evidence that what his 
friends say is true, and that he has always 
been on the side of reform. In private, they 
say, he has always talked freely both on 
political and ecclesiastical questions. Publicly, 
he has kept his counsel. He has not protested 
officially against the abuses of the government 
of which, technically, he formed part. And the 
question arises, Supposing he had the will to 
do so, had he the power? 

This involves the question of his office, or 
offices. As I have said, he is the Minister of 
Public Worship, controlling, nominally, the exer- 
cise of all forms of religious worship, Christian 
as well as Moslem ; though the institution of 

176 



The Sheikh-ul- Islam 



self-governing Christian Chnrches has robbed 
the former part of his duties of all real im- 
portance. Secondly, he is the official inter- 
preter of the Sacred Law, which is, in strict 
theory, all law. He is a kind of Lord Chan- 
cellor. In this capacity it is his business to 
state the law when called upon to do so ; he 
is a final court of appeal, as he was in the 
supreme instance, the leading case, of the grant 
of the Constitution. This power of his is in 
theory very far-reaching, and extends even to 
the deposition of the Sultan, if definite proofs 
are produced that he is of unsound mind, of 
depraved character, or of unorthodox opinions. 
But then the Sultan himself appoints the 
Sheikh-ul- 1 slam ; so that we must accept the 
existence of two powers not merely coequal, 
but each superior to the other — an idea at 
which the imagination of the European lawyer 
staggers. 

But is the Sheikh something more than is 
comprised in these two offices ? Is he an 
infallible Pope? Is he the "head" of Islam, 
and if so, in what sense ? Can he go beyond 
the mere interpretation and declaration of the 
law, and alter, of his own motion, the course 
of government? Can he bind the consciences 

177 M 



Turkey in Revolution 

of the faithful all over the Moslem world? 
These questions I do not profess to answer. 
The answer may depend largely on the 
personality of any given holder of the office. 

To judge, however, from the way in which 
people speak of the Sheikh, it does not appear 
that his person commands any great degree of 
religious reverence ; his share in the humdrum 
affairs of government administration must, 
indeed, diminish his pontifical character, if he 
had any ; and he is probably quite honest in 
his repudiation of religious authority. The im- 
pression left upon my mind by our interview 
was that the Sheikh is essentially a lawyer. 
His intellectual character, one might say, is 
what one would expect of a Lord Chancellor 
who had spent his life in interpreting religious 
law. He would wait until appeal was made 
to him ; he would not conceive it to be his 
duty to assert himself or his opinions against 
opposition. This would be the natural attitude 
of a man of humble character, who had not 
lived in the world of hard facts. Alone, 
a scholar, immersed in the law which he 
idealised, he would be content to reserve for 
a private circle of friends his liberal concep- 
tion of Islam. He would hear of massacres 

178 



The Sheikh-ul-Islam 

and oppressions ; he would think of them as 
the aberrations of fanaticism, unavoidable, 
perhaps, among an uneducated people, dimming 
indeed, but not obscuring, the perfection of the 
divine code. Into such a life there breaks the 
sudden crisis of the Revolution ; the u awful 
moment, to which Heaven has joined great 
issues." And he decides that he will not be 
untrue to the slowly formed ideal of a life- 
time's meditation ; and in the heat of conflict 
he " keeps the law, in calmness made." This 
is, at least, a possible view of the Sheikh's 
attitude. 

The upshot is that, however important his 
decision at a particular moment may have 
been, his obiter dicta will not ensure the suc- 
cess of the liberalising movement in Moham- 
medanism. To estimate its prospects we must 
look elsewhere. 

The hojas protesting in the mosque of Con- 
stantinople, the old mollah fearing that the end 
of Islam is at hand, do not stand alone. 
Doubtless they represent a feeling which is 
widespread. If it finds little expression for the 
moment, that is only because the popular ten- 
dency of the time is all towards reform. Dis- 
appointment will come, when the baseless 

179 



Turkey in Revolution 

dreams which must attend the new era of 
liberty — and some, perhaps, of its genuine pro- 
mises — are found to be unfulfilled. The people 
will begin to ask why the good time does not 
arrive. And then will be the opportunity for 
the old men to shake their long, white beards 
and say, " What did we tell you ? Your fra- 
ternity, your liberty, are vain dreams, inven- 
tions of the Western infidel. Islam came by 
the sword ; woe to it if it throws the sword 
away." 

The Turks, perhaps, may without difficulty 
adopt the milder views if they are wisely led ; 
they are a docile people, and with most of 
them their religion is hardly fundamental. But 
the Arabs? What of those rocky deserts out 
of which the Prophet came, with their burning 
sands, their clear horizons, their sharply defined 
and keenly-felt religion, their untameable spirit? 
They form, indeed, the most incalculable 
element in the Turkish Empire to-day. It 
occupies three great provinces and mingles with 
other races elsewhere. It sends at least forty 
deputies to Parliament, one of whom I specially 
recall in his mysterious dignity — his brown face, 
and black hair and beard, surmounted by a low 
black head-dress and framed in the folds of the 

1 80 



The Sheikh-ul-Islam 

green and purple keffiyeh which fell over his 
shoulders. There may be surprises in store 
here, and a great, perhaps an insuperable, force 
of resistance to the efforts of the liberal Mos- 
lems. 

These difficulties must not be forgotten, but 
happily the signs of a new religious spirit are 
not few. Its chief feature is its insistence on 
constitutional government and political equality, 
as compatible with, and even inculcated by, the 
religion of the Koran. At present it does not 
much concern itself with any other problem than 
the relation of Islam to politics. Very little on 
the subject of free thought in general has yet 
found its way into print, though in a journal 
conducted by some of the leading mollahs philo- 
sophical problems are freely discussed. It is 
felt, also, even among the most advanced, that 
the time is not yet ripe for the treatment of 
particular problems, either of ritual or of ethics. 
The prohibition of alcohol is a point on which 
opinions differ, and it is far from being univer- 
sally observed among the educated classes. 
There is a tendency towards greater freedom 
in practice, but public argument is deprecated 
by both the older and the newer schools. The 
position of women, theologically and socially, is 

181 



Turkey in Revolution 

little discussed, though all the time minute 
changes of custom are eating into the old 
stronghold of exclusion and contempt. 

It is well that the liberal movement in reli- 
gion should concentrate on the political ques- 
tion, which is the supreme problem of the 
hour. The leaders of the Young Turks, of 
course, share in this movement to the full, and 
some of them go beyond it. They all show 
a great respect for the established religion, and 
probably observe its ceremonies. At the same 
time, they discuss with open minds the advan- 
tages of a universal religion of benevolence, tran- 
scending Islam ; some of them are freemasons, 
and believe that they see in the masonic 
ideas the germ of a great spiritual revival. 
The inconsistency (if inconsistency it is) may 
perhaps be explained by the extreme simplicity 
of Islam. Its most modern exponents, agreeing 
with the Sheikh-ul-Islam, represent it as a pure 
Theism, entirely free from any sacerdotal cha- 
racter. No doubt the populace does not view 
it in that light ; but the educated man may do so 
if he will. And education, say the Young 
Turks, is to be spread wider and wider in the 
days to come ; it is to be the foundation of 
the new Turkey. 

182 



The Sheikh -ul-Islam 

There is a section, represented perhaps chiefly 
among the journalists and students, which might 
be called distinctly anti-ecclesiastical ; but, for 
the most part, the views of educated Moslems 
are, I think, those of a distinguished man who 
was good enough to speak to us at length on 
his religious opinions. " Islam is an essentially 
simple religion. Just as Christianity was devel- 
oped out of Judaism, rejecting the complications 
of the Mosaic law, so Islam has developed out 
of Christianity, as a protest against the new 
complications which were growing up in the 
Churches of the seventh century. This is the 
reason why a Christian is hardly ever con- 
verted to Judaism, or a Moslem to Chris- 
tianity. Ours is a religion which thinking men 
accept." 

But the main question, of course, is how far 
the liberal movement is spreading among the 
masses of the people. On this there is little 
evidence to be had. The theological students, 
drawn from every class, were among the 
strongest, and, in the eyes of the Government, 
the most dangerous supporters of the Constitu- 
tion of 1876. The liberalising influence is still 
stronger among them to-day. Education has 
spread very widely during the last thirty years. 

183 



Turkey in Revolution 

Many of the teachers in the elementary schools 
are men of advanced religious views. Since the 
Revolution a largely increased number of pupils 
are applying for entrance to Robert College, 
an American Protestant institution which has 
done wonders for the Christians of the Balkan 
States. There they will share with Christians 
a simple form of common worship. One may 
say that the horizon of the future is bright, 
though marked with clouds which may either 
gather or dissolve. 



184 



CHAPTER XIII 



THE ELECTIONS 



ERTAINLY we have one thing to learn 



elections picturesque. With us the ballot-box 
is an uninteresting affair, of which the general 
public takes no particular notice. With them 
it is a symbol, the sacred ark of democracy. 
It is draped in the national colours. It is 
carried about on triumphal cars, guarded by 
little girls dressed in white. We saw it lying- 
in state in the rooms of the municipal build- 
ings, and were allowed, as a great privilege, to 
gaze upon it with open mouth and bated breath. 
On great occasions you may see it perched on 
the hump of a camel — perhaps the oddest com- 
bination of East and West which has ever yet 
been seen. The life and colour of the whole 
business puts the drabness of our elections to 
shame. 




from the Turks, and that is how to make 



185 



Turkey in Revolution 

According to the Turkish Constitution, an 
election takes place every four years. The 
voters must be twenty-five years of age, and 
must be direct tax-payers. The system is one 
of indirect election. One " elector of the second 
degree" is allotted to every five hundred voters; 
and for this purpose the voters are divided up 
into groups, each of which has its own polling 
station and votes for its own * 1 elector." The 
whole of the " electors " for any given sanjak 
(county) or city subsequently meet together and 
elect the deputy or deputies. One deputy is 
allotted to every fifty thousand of the male 
population. A deputy must be thirty years of 
age, and must read and write Turkish. 

Constantinople, for instance, has a male popu- 
lation of something like half a million, and 
therefore elects ten deputies. The principal ex- 
citement, however, centred round the primary 
election, in which some 250,000 voters took 
part, and something like 500 " electors of the 
second degree" were chosen. The voters on 
the way to the poll would march in procession 
through the streets, with banners waving and 
drums beating. The polling place was gene- 
rally the court of a mosque, where long 
tables would be set out in the open air. 

186 



The Elections 

Another procession would be formed to escort 
the ballot-box, decorated with gay ribands and 
wreaths of flowers, to the municipal building. 
Sometimes the candidate himself would be es- 
corted by a large crowd, clapping and cheering 
at regular intervals, but marching sometimes for 
miles in silence, and taking the whole process 
with the utmost solemnity. In these proces- 
sions soldiers and military bands would take 
part freely. Even the dry text of the electoral 
law waxes eloquent over some parts of the 
proceedings. It is solemnly laid down that "a 
certain number of notables, escorted by a mounted 
guard," shall ride round the villages to fix the 
day and indicate the method of the election. 
In Constantinople the chief of all the proces- 
sions took place on the day when the primary 
election was completed. The crowd was dense, 
but extremely orderly. The cortege was pre- 
ceded by a group of Arab swordsmen, who, 
at intervals, performed a mock fight, hacking 
at each other and receiving the blows on tiny 
round metal shields, the demonstrators, mean- 
while, patiently waiting behind. Then came a 
group of mounted gendarmes, followed by a 
long array of small open carriages, in which 
Moslem mollahs, Greek and Armenian priests, 

187 



Turkey in Revolution 

and Jewish rabbis sat side by side. Precau- 
tions were even taken that there should be no 
suggestion of superiority or the reverse, the 
right-hand seat being occupied in turn by the 
representative of each Church. Next came 
large groups of Turkish, Greek, and Armenian 
voters, and then the great show — the ballot- 
boxes one after another. On one of the cars 
stood six little girls — two Turkish, two Greek, 
and two Armenian — holding hands in sign of 
amity, dressed in white in token of peace, and 
wearing, oddly enough, the grey woollen caps 
which were at that time beginning to take the 
place of the red fezzes, because the red fezzes 
are made in Austria. Nor did the attractions 
end here. There was a motor-car, pushed by 
stalwart men ! And last of all came a camel 
with a ballot-box on his back, bestridden by 
a small boy in a Greek fustanella, stepping 
with scornful dignity over the rough and broken 
pavement. Several detachments of soldiers — 
horse and foot — gave a military air to the 
demonstration. 

After this, the final election of the deputies 
was a comparatively quiet process. The 
" electors " assembled at the buildings of the 
new post-office ; there was a little preliminary 

188 



Photo by] 



THE ELECTIONS. 



[l'Aigk. 



A procession escorting the ballot-box after the primary election (see the last picture) to the municipal 
buildings. The ballot-box is on the carriage in the background. 

[To face page 189. 



The Elections 



discussion among them, but no excitement, in 
spite of strong differences of opinion. A prayer 
was offered, expressed in general terms to suit 
the susceptibilities of non-Moslems, that Provi- 
dence would bless and prosper the Ottoman 
people. Though there was no manifestation of 
popular feeling, intense interest was taken in 
the elections for the capital, especially since, 
in consequence of defective municipal arrange- 
ments, they were the last to be completed. 
The whole process was conducted in a per- 
fectly orderly fashion in every part of the 
Empire — a fresh proof of the docility of the 
Turkish people under sensible leadership. 

The part played by the Committee of Union 
and Progress in the elections was extremely 
important. They made estimates of the popu- 
lation in each county or city, and for those in 
which the non-Moslem element was consider- 
able they put forward candidates representing, 
and generally approved by, each nationality. 
It was a rough sort of proportional system. 
They communicated their intention to the 
nationalities concerned, and intimated that they 
would secure the election of those whose names 
they had put forward, but would resist the 
candidature of any others. Their electoral 

189 



Turkey in Revolution 

strength and influence being very great, they 
could, as a rule, ensure the election of their 
candidates for all the vacancies. In some places, 
however, especially in the Eastern provinces, 
they were unable to nominate a complete 
" ticket," and some candidates, not put forward 
under their auspices, were elected. These can- 
didates were, as a rule, men of dignity and 
local importance, without any very definite 
policy and without any organisation to back 
them. The Committee tried, as far as possible, 
to secure that, even if conservatives, they should 
not be reactionaries. 

Serious complaints have been made against 
the Committee's conduct by some of the Christian 
nationalities. These were chiefly concerned with 
abuses of power on the part of the Electoral 
Commissions. A few words of explanation are 
required. 

The voters' lists are originally compiled by 
the imams, priests, and mukhtars — who thus 
correspond to our " overseers " — for each parish 
(nahie) or ward of a town. But the really im- 
portant body is the Electoral Commission for 
the district (kazd), whose business it is to 
verify and correct these lists, and to conduct 
the election. It does the work, in fact, of 

190 



The Elections 



" revising barrister" and " returning officer." 
It consists of from four to ten members, chosen 
from the Administrative Council, with power of 
co-optation, and presided over by the mayor. 
They sit every day for one or two weeks, hear 
evidence, and strike out or add names. There 
are many opportunities of unfair exclusion or 
inclusion. The would-be voter must satisfy 
several conditions as to age, foreign nationality, 
foreign service, payment of taxes, and discharge 
of legal proceedings, some of which might in- 
volve doubtful questions of law or fact. 

The complaint is that the Committee of 
Union and Progress dictated the membership 
of these Commissions, in which matter they 
showed unfairness. The Commissions, it is 
said, " gerrymandered " the electoral districts, 
grouping together (say) 250 Turkish voters in 
one place and, 750 Bulgarian voters in another, 
the votes of the second group thus having only 
the same weight as those of the first. They 
are accused also of making use of the legal 
exceptions to exclude voters whom they wished 
to disfranchise. There was a serious dispute, 
for instance, over a large number of Greeks, 
who were alleged to have previously claimed 
to be Greek subjects for the purpose of avoid- 

191 



Turkey in Revolution 

ing certain taxes. As an average case, the 
district of Stroumitza may be cited, where the 
Macedonian Bulgars are said to predominate 
largely, but where the "electors" were chosen 
in the following proportion: twelve Turks, 
five Greeks, one Jew, and only nine Bulgars. 
Complaints are made in Macedonia that the 
voters' lists were published in Turkish only ; 
that both Turks and Greeks under the age of 
twenty-five were admitted in large numbers ; 
and, in some cases, that intimidation by armed 
Greeks was winked at by the authorities. 

It is true, of course, that the results of the 
elections fall far short of what we should con- 
sider fair. When, however, we consider how 
elections are " worked" by those in power in 
other countries — in South Italy, for instance — 
we ought not perhaps to judge the Young 
Turks too severely for their conduct at a try- 
ing and critical moment. It must be remembered 
that they were in the midst of diplomatic quarrels 
with Bulgaria and Greece ; and also that they 
came into power as the saviours of the integrity 
of the Empire. If it had been put about that they 
were giving undue influence to the Christians, it 
might have damaged the cause of reform. 

It is, indeed, a very serious fact that the 
192 



The Elections 

representation of the Christian peoples should 
be so small. It is far below the number to 
which they would be entitled on a proportional 
basis. Without a regular proportional system, 
however, the nationalities in Turkey, as such, 
would have obtained hardly any representation 
at all, if it had not been for the Committee of 
Union and Progress. In all but a very few 
divisions the Moslems would have been able 
to outvote the Christians and return Moslem 
members for the whole of the vacancies, which 
might number from one to ten. Looked at 
in this light, the Committee's ' 1 arrangements " 
seem praiseworthy rather than otherwise. They 
certainly showed no lack of care and thought. 
It was found, for instance, impossible to give 
the Armenians in the interior of Asia Minor 
the amount of representation which they were 
considered to deserve. To compensate for this 
the Committee allotted them seats, which they 
would not otherwise have obtained, in Smyrna 
and Adrianople. It may be noted that very 
few complaints have come from the Armenians. 
They see in the Constitution their best chance, 
and, though they know that they have not been 
treated with complete justice, they have made 
up their minds not to grumble. 

193 N 



Turkey in Revolution 

The power of the Committee is alleged by 
critics to be on the wane. The result of the 
elections suggests the contrary. They have 
triumphed in the great majority of divisions. 
In Constantinople, in spite of gloomy prophe- 
cies, they carried their " ticket " without a single 
exception. Other lists were put forward, notably 
one by the Greeks and one by the Union 
Liberale, inspired by Prince Saba-ed-din. In so 
far as they differed from that of the Committee, 
these lists were all unsuccessful. 

The Committee is believed to command a 
majority in the Senate as well as in the Chamber. 
The Senate, according to the Constitution, is 
nominated by the Sultan, but the Committees 
suggestions, amounting to two-thirds of the 
membership, seem to have been mostly accepted. 
They are not satisfied, however, with the com- 
position of the Senate, and a project is said 
to be on foot for an amendment of the Consti- 
tution which will make one-third of it elective, 
and provide that a Bill can only be vetoed by 
a two-thirds majority. 



194 





THE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT. 

A scarlet flag, about 2 ft. square, of which thousands were sold on the day of the opening of the Turkish 
Parliament, December 17, 1908. The English reader will note its place of manufacture. 
It bears the date of the Grant of the Constitution. 

[To face page 195. 



CHAPTER XIV 



THE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT 

DAY of brilliant sun and cold, crisp air, 



contrasting delightfully with the weeks of 
gloomy weather which have preceded it ; the 
whole population in the streets ; joy in the most 
inexpressive faces ; bright scarlet banners, with 
the crescent and star in white, waving from every 
window, with here and there a green one, to vary 
the almost universal red. Our road, which the 
procession will follow later, dips down from Pera, 
crosses the Old Bridge over the Golden Horn, 
where every ship is gay with flags, rises to the 
grand mosque of Suleiman, and then descends 
slowly towards the Palace of Justice, on the 
point of the peninsula, where stood the ancient 
city of Byzantium. There are soldiers, in 
couples, every twenty yards. On the site of 
the Forum of Theodosius, now the approach 
to the War Office, the road is lined by heavy 




195 



Turkey in Revolution 

cavalry on white Hungarian horses, their uni- 
forms a dark grey, with red pennons at the 
points of their long upright lances. The mind 
goes back to the processions of old, the pomp 
of the Emperors of the East, with the long 
hierarchy of gorgeous officials, and the gold 
and silver plate, the priceless silken hangings 
displayed at the windows and balconies ; far 
exceeding the procession of to-day in grandeur, 
but never equalling it in significance. We cross 
the Forum of Constantine, marking the spot 
where he planted his banner before the final 
victory over Licinius. Just to our right lies the 
Hippodrome, where Justinian stooped to take a 
part in the fierce factions of the circus. And as 
we push our way with difficulty into the great 
oblong space in front of the Parliament House — 
the Palace of Justice, where the Parliament met 
in 1877 — we are treading the Augusteum, over- 
looked to-day, as it was fourteen centuries ago, 
by the vast but clumsy exterior of St. Sophia. 

A moment's parleying among the high dig- 
nitaries at the gate, and we slip through, cross 
the court, ascend a broad stair to the first floor, 
and are installed in a low gallery at the side of 
the Chamber, like a big box at a theatre. By 
good fortune, it has a window, which looks down 

196 



The Opening of Parliament 

upon the open space through which we have just 
passed. We have time to take in the view. 

The side to our right is formed by the lower 
domes of St. Sophia, to whose edges clusters of 
women in black or violet seem to be clinging 
somewhat precariously ; there is just a glimpse 
of the huge central dome, culminating in its 
gilded crescent. The buildings on the left are 
hidden from us by the angle of a wall. Right 
in front, at the farther end where the procession 
will enter, is a huddle of houses rising up the hill- 
side, and crowned by the solid Serasker tower, 
white against a cloudless sky. 

The crowd is enormous. From above it 
seems all red — a sea of fezzes — save for the 
white turbans of the priests and the white flags 
borne by the students of the Law School. It 
sways to and fro excitedly, and the soldiers are 
pretty free with the butts of their rifles now and 
then, but it never resists, it is gentle and good- 
humoured, and not one serious accident is 
reported. The infantry in dark blue, four 
ranks deep, keep a wide path open down the 
middle for the procession — wide but winding, 
with a want of precision which adds greatly to 
the artistic effect. A place of honour by the gate 
is occupied by the khaki-clad "chasseurs" from 

197 



Turkey in Revolution 

the Macedonian garrison, who played a notable 
part in the Revolution. The bands play the new 
"Constitution hymn"; they play it again and 
again, as if the people could never have enough 
of it. At one point on the right the midday sun 
catches a group of brass instruments and makes 
a blinding glare of them. 

From the window we watch the deputies 
arriving one by one. The military members 
are in uniform, which they will discard after the 
first sitting. Most are in fez and frock-coat ; but 
here comes a Kurd, striding along in a long 
cape of black and white fur, and a black cap 
surrounded by a turban ; and yonder the Arab 
deputy from the Yemen, his graceful keffiyeh, 
shot with green and faint purple, falling down 
on either side of a dark, black-bearded face, 
and his long black robe sweeping the ground. 
The Ministers come separately, in black Civil 
Service uniform, encrusted with gold, and set 
off by a broad green sash. The ulema, the 
heads of the Moslem Church, in long, full robes 
of brilliant green, gold collar, and large white 
turban ; the Sheikh-ul-Islam, all in white save 
for his turban of deep yellow ; the Greek 
patriarch, in black, with a green collar, looking 
immensely dignified ; the Armenian patriarch ; 

198 



The Opening of Parliament 

the Bulgarian exarch ; the representative of the 
Holy See, in flowing purple robe and cap ; and, 
finally, the Diplomatic Corps, in plumed cocked 
hats and stiff, uncomfortable coats, advancing in 
order of seniority ; these are among the chief 
of the guests. A special round of applause 
greets the English ambassador. 

Within, the House fills rapidly. It is a square 
room of no great size, painted white, with cur- 
tains and upholstery of white and red — the 
national colours. The platform or tribune of 
the President, with the tables of the secretaries 
below, occupies most of one side. The deputies 
sit facing it, each with a desk before him ; rows 
of red fezzes, relieved by from thirty to forty 
white turbans. There are galleries on each of 
the other three sides. Immediately below the 
President's tribune sit the senators and the 
dignitaries of the Church. Separate places were 
reserved for the Moslem and the Christian eccle- 
siastics ; but the former invite the latter to sit 
with them, and the little symbol of fraternisation 
is appreciated. Ahmed Riza, the leader of the 
Young Turks, is kissed on the forehead by an 
ancient mollak. Several members of the Com- 
mittee of Union and Progress, including Enver 
Bey, are accommodated on the floor of the 

199 



Turkey in Revolution 

House. The last of the deputies walk in and 
take their places. A pause ensues. The mise- 
en-scene is complete. 

***** 

The climax came swiftly. A sudden clamour 
of bugles ; the troops, with fixed bayonets, pre- 
sented arms ; the bands struck up (for the first 
time) the Hamidieh March ; we turned towards 
the open space outside, and round the corner 
at the far end a squadron of cavalry, holding 
their white horses at a steady canter, their red 
pennons fluttering above, swung into the arena. 
They were through it in a moment, and had 
barely time to line up on either side of the 
entrance gate before the Sultan's carriage was 
passing through them at a fast trot — a light 
victoria with the hood up, drawn by four bays. 
Facing him sat his son, Burhan-ed-din, and the 
Grand Vizier. The speed of the procession, 
which had covered the four miles from Yildiz 
Kiosk in half an hour, made a regular order 
almost impossible, and one got but a fleeting 
impression of two or three other carriages, 
encompassed rather than followed by a cloud of 
horsemen — princes and aides-de-camps, dazzling 
uniforms, a rapid advance, a sudden halt. 

There was a pause while the Sultan and his 
200 



The Opening of Parliament 

suite came up the stair, and then, before we ex- 
pected it, he was standing there before us, in a 
little square box to the President's left, lit at the 
back by electric light. The old man's silhouette 
was sharply defined ; the simple fez, the head 
bent forward in melancholy lassitude, the short 
form clad in a thick military overcoat of dark 
grey, edged with red, with heavy epaulettes. 
He stood there saluting, and all the assembly 
stood in silence. Then he handed a roll of 
paper, the Speech from the Throne, to the 
Master of the Ceremonies, who carried it down 
to be read by the First Secretary of the Palace, 
while the Ministers, including the commanding 
figure of the Sheikh-ul- Islam, filed in to their 
places. " In spite of evil counsellors, we re- 
solved to order the election of a new Parlia- 
ment." There was a hoarse, almost a fierce, 
murmur of applause. These deputies knew well 
that the man at whose name, for thirty years, 
a whole empire trembled, stood there, for all 
his pomp, their prisoner and their puppet. He 
stood nervously, now raising a white-gloved hand 
to adjust his fez, but for the most part leaning 
forward, with hands clasped on his sword-hilt, 
shifting at intervals from one foot to the other. 
The speech ended ; and the blare of trumpets 

20 1 



Turkey in Revolution 

and the dull boom of a hundred cannon an- 
nounced to the city that the Parliament was 
opened. 

Then the oldest of the ulema rose, and, turn- 
ing towards the Sultan, prayed that God might 
bless the Sovereign and prosper the new Con- 
stitution ; while all the assembly, and the Sultan 
himself, stood with arms outstretched and palms 
turned upwards. The voice was high and nasal, 
but full of feeling. The prayer was punctuated 
by low murmurs of approbation, suggesting oddly 
a revivalist meeting. And at the end the 
strange little figure in the box seemed to pull 
itself together, and quite unexpectedly (for it 
formed no part of the programme) spoke in a 
low voice a few quite simple but emphatic 
words ; the left hand holding the sword, the 
right extended towards the deputies. It gave 
him "extraordinary" pleasure to see them as- 
sembled there ; he prayed God for the continu- 
ance and success of the Parliament. Again he 
saluted slowly, and withdrew. It was over. 

What were his thoughts? His eyes, wander- 
ing restlessly over the assembly, might have 
discerned men whom he had sent to exile a 
quarter of a century ago ; men whose nearest 

202 



The Opening of Parliament 

and dearest had "disappeared" at his order. 
In a far corner he may have noted the little 
group of young officers at whose daring blow 
the whole structure of his despotism had tumbled 
like a house of cards. Did there penetrate into 
that unlettered brain, behind the high, abnor- 
mally narrow forehead, any sense of the strange 
vicissitudes of his fortune, and the depth of a 
nations forgiveness? The drive from Yildiz, 
which he had so much dreaded, had been a 
triumph ; the people, who would hardly have 
been blamed if they had torn him from limb to 
limb, had shouted themselves hoarse, delighted 
to see him once more in their midst ; and here 
were their chosen representatives, in Parliament 
assembled ; and here was he, the lord of a great 
empire still ; and he was an old man ; and the 
new regime seemed at any rate safer and 
pleasanter than the old. Did those impromptu 
words of his come with a sudden impulse from 
the heart? 

***** 

In the lobbies they are occupied with other 
questions than these. Why did the Sultan not 
renew his oath to observe the Constitution? 
There is some dissatisfaction over this, and the 
deputies refuse to take the oath of loyalty indivi- 

203 



Turkey in Revolution 

dually ; it is merely read out by the President, 
and a general assent given by the whole House. 
The business begins ; credentials are presented. 
The plumes and the sashes, the tinsel and the 
steel, are trivialities ; it is the men in frock-coats 
who are going to make or mar, within these 
walls, the destiny of Turkey. 

But all interest centres for the moment on the 
departure of the Sultan and the distinguished 
guests. The brilliant show melts gradually 
away, the crowd singling out its favourites for 
vociferous applause. The magnificent inaugura- 
tion has had its uses, if it has impressed on the 
popular mind the greatness of the change, the 
glory of the new era of liberty. Before the sun 
goes down the city is already illuminated. As 
twilight deepens into dark, the swirling surface 
of the Bosphorus reflects the fairy-lights of a 
score of palaces ; rockets shoot up from every 
quarter; the ships in the Golden Horn, lit up 
from stem to stern, flash their searchlights over 
roofs and domes and towers ; little rings of light 
surround the muezzins' galleries at the summit 
of the tall minarets ; while reckless holiday- 
makers discharge their revolvers into the air. 

But the queerest thing about all this revelry is 
its short duration. Only those whose deeds are 

204 



The Opening of Parliament 

evil go out at night in Constantinople ; and the 
habit of early sleep is not easily broken. By 
seven o'clock the lights have begun to wane. 
By nine the whole population is in bed, and we 
stumble home in the dark, while the watchman, 
according to immemorial custom, is tapping with 
his long staff the deserted pavements. 



205 



CHAPTER XV 



THE DEPUTIES AT WORK 

XACT information as to the personnel of 



the new Parliament is not easy to obtain. 
It numbers two hundred and forty. The largest 
single class is perhaps that of the ecclesiastics, 
who amount to nearly forty. The Beys, or 
landlords, must be fairly numerous. There are 
a considerable number of doctors, lawyers, and 
ex-officials. Of the leading men of the Com- 
mittee of Union and Progress seven or eight 
are deputies, most of them for Salonica, Con- 
stantinople, and Adrianople. 

The national divisions are of even greater 
importance. The Turkish, Kurdish, and Alban- 
ian deputies are about one hundred and fifty ; 
the members from the Arabic-speaking provinces 
about fifty. Of the Christian peoples the Greeks 
stand first, with eighteen deputies ; then come 
the Armenians with twelve, the Bulgarians with 




207 



Turkey in Revolution 

four, the Serbs with two, and the Vlachs with 
one. There are also three Jews. To take a 
few special examples from different parts of the 
Empire, Constantinople has five Turks, two 
Greeks, two Armenians, and one Jew. Salonica 
has three Turks, one Greek, one Jew, one 
Vlach ; Monastir has one Turk, one Greek, 
one Bulgar, one Serb ; Erzeroum has three 
Turks and one Armenian ; Smyrna has four 
Turks, two Greeks, and one Armenian ; Aleppo 
has five Turks. 

As regards the general character of the 
Chamber, what has so far been most con- 
spicuous is its sensitiveness to its own rights. 
The Reply to the Speech from the Throne 
was characterised by very plain speaking. Its 
strong declarations, and the comparative em- 
phasis laid on home and foreign questions, 
make it interesting enough to quote. 

"Abdul ft edjid granted the decree Gulhana 
establishing the principles of liberty. Your 
Majesty confirmed the same by granting the 
Constitution, but in spite of the approval of the 
people the Chamber was dissolved, in violation 
of the Constitution. Those who deceived Your 
Majesty into this violation dared to accuse the 
nation of incapacity. 

208 



The Deputies at Work 

" Nevertheless, thanks be to God, the nation 
recognised at the right moment that the ruin 
of the country was becoming inevitable and 
submitted to Your Majesty their unanimous 
wishes. We are thankful that Your Majesty, 
seeing the extent of the danger and despite 
your advisers, has convoked the Chamber. 

" While expressing our sincere thanks for 
giving effect to the popular will, thus saving 
the Empire, we remark that if Your Majesty 
had not listened to the deceitful insinuations 
of bad men, we should have seen changes in 
various parts of the Empire instead of ruins, 
progress instead of decadence, and there would 
have been fewer chances of exploiting the 
Empire for personal profit. 

" The proclamation of independence by Bul- 
garia and the annexation of Bosnia- Herzegovina 
by Austria- Hungary came while Turkey desired 
only peace as a sequence to her peaceful Revo- 
lution. The Chamber shares Your Majesty's 
regrets. The policy of the Chamber is one of 
peace within the Empire and with all nations. 
We are confident that these questions will soon 
be satisfactorily settled." 

Constitutional purism has gone even further. 
A member of the Senate was sent in person 

209 o 



Turkey in Revolution 

to convey greetings to the Chamber on the 
opening of Parliament. The Chamber con- 
sidered that this implied some superiority on 
the part of the Senate, and referred to the 
Article of the Constitution which lays it down 
that all communications between the two 
Houses must be in writing. It refused to 
receive the envoy. 

For the rest, it has shown its sympathy with 
constitutional movements abroad by passing a 
strongly worded resolution in favour of the 
Persian Constitutionalists. In debate it is not 
long-winded, and has proved ready to follow the 
leadership of strong and respected personalities. 
An incident which might have caused violent 
disagreement, when the election of one of the 
Damascus deputies was questioned on the 
ground of his previous misconduct and alleged 
espionage, was passed over quietly by the 
sober sense of the House, those who had 
raised the objection withdrawing it in the 
interests of peace. 

The future conduct of the Chamber of 
Deputies, its division into parties, and its atti- 
tude towards the Government and the Sovereign 
are matters of conjecture. One or two apparent 
possibilities may almost certainly be ruled out. 

210 



The Deputies at Work 

One of these is the possibility that it might 
contain a definitely reactionary party. There 
are doubtless a number of deputies who may 
be described as conservative, but the evidence 
seems to show that, even in the south-eastern 
provinces, no one has been elected who is 
known to be in favour of the old despotism. 
The danger of reaction in the Parliament itself, 
if there is such a danger, lies in the secret 
corruption of the deputies by those interested 
in overthrowing the new rdgime ; and this could 
only be successful if a strong popular move- 
ment were first set on foot. Another supposi- 
tion which may be rejected is that the Moslems 
will all range themselves in one camp and the 
Christians in another. The reason is very 
simple — that out of two hundred and forty 
deputies the Christians possess only thirty- 
seven. Any division which is likely to have 
an effect upon policy will be based on other 
than purely religious differences. In the matter 
of religion the Parliament might be described 
as being, contrary to most expectations, one of 
the most homogeneous in the world. The 
great preponderance of Moslems constitutes, 
indeed, a danger which must not be left out 
of calculation. On the other side of the 



Turkey in Revolution 

account should be set the fact that the Chris- 
tians, though small in number, will speak 
with authority considerably greater than their 
numerical proportion would warrant. They 
represent a powerful and important element 
outside, and their Parliamentary weakness will 
probably draw them together. 

An interesting question arises as to the 
future of the Union Liberale, representing the 
views of Prince Saba-ed-din. This body has 
not attained much electoral importance, but it 
represents a policy, or rather a type of opinion, 
which will probably come to the front. The 
formula of the Union Liberale is "administra- 
tive decentralisation." It considers that the 
police and the general execution of the laws 
should be in the hands of the elective local 
councils, which, in theory, have never been 
abolished, and are now being revived. The 
original programme of the Union included the 
word "autonomy," but this gave rise to alarm, 
and has been either dropped or explained 
away. The Union, however, claims to include 
all races in its membership, and to stand for 
opposition to Turkish Chauvinism and the 
cultivation of "Ottoman" patriotism. The de- 
mand for local self-government will come, in 

212 



By kind p ermissi on of] 



[the Editor of the "Sear East." 



PRINCE SABA-ED-DIN. 

The brother-in-law of the Sultan, he has nevertheless lived in voluntary exile, in 
Paris, for the last ten years. He is the founder of the Union Libera'le, which 
advocates a measure of local self-government, and claims to be more liberal than 
the Committee of Union and Progress. It may play an important part in 
Turkish politics, 

[To face page 212. 



The Deputies at Work 

one form or another, not only from Greeks, 
Bulgarians, and Albanians, but from Arabs and 
Syrians, and possibly from other nationalities 
as well. The Union Libdrale may form the 
nucleus of a Moslem-Christian combination 
united by a common political interest. 

It is not probable that the Parliament will 
be divided by any subtle distinctions of theory, 
such as in the first Russian Duma divided the 
Octobrists from the Cadets, and the Social 
Democrats from the Social Revolutionaries. 
The issues will not be social or economic. 
The main governmental problem will be that 
of centralisation ; but the divisions thus occa- 
sioned will be crossed by other lines of separa- 
tion based on nationality. The result will be 
confusing. One of the most mysterious elements, 
for instance, is that of the Arab deputies. They 
have a large representation ; they stand for 
perhaps five millions of constituents. Will they 
find themselves ranged beside the Christians in 
demanding autonomy — or will they be found 
attacking them as infidels? 

If the Chamber falls, as it may do, into two 
main groups, one may conjecture that there 
will be a " Right," consisting of the more con- 
servative, both in politics and religion, who will 

213 



Turkey in Revolution 

favour the retention of some power in the 
hands of the Sultan and the maintenance, per- 
haps in a mild form, of Turkish ascendency, 
and who in foreign politics will be Imperialists, 
and probably inclined to favour German friend- 
ship ; and on the other side a " Left," insisting 
on the letter of the Constitution, concentrating 
attention on home affairs and the endeavour 
to introduce the ideas of Western liberalism 
and the methods of Western efficiency, and 
inclined to seek the sympathy and support of 
England. 

It may well be, however, that such pro- 
phecies, based on European experience, may 
be falsified, and that the Parliament of Turkey 
may be a new one not merely in its composi- 
tion and grouping, but in its nature and central 
conception. The notion of a Parliament in the 
minds of the people seems to be that of a 
council of wise men, such as they conceive to 
have been consulted by the good Sultans of 
old, and even by the Prophet himself. A few 
strong men may lead it, while the rest sit 
silent ; or it may sink into an advisory rather 
than a controlling body, leaving all power to 
the executive, and relying for its authority on 
solemn occasional declarations of opinion. 

214 



The Deputies at Work 

On two important matters the Parliament 
was, at the time of writing, unanimous. It has 
approved the general policy of the Government 
in power ; and it has demanded with one voice 
the "revision" of the Constitution. What this 
revision may signify remains to be seen. There 
is a strong desire to make the Senate more 
democratic; and a lively fear of Article 113, 
which retains in the Sultan's hands the right 
of exile, and confers on the executive the power 
to proclaim martial law. In the comic paper, 
the Kalem, one of the most admirable by-pro- 
ducts of the Revolution, Young Turkey is 
represented as an infant lying in its cradle, 
and Article 113 is the sword of destruction, 
suspended over it by a single thread. 



215 



CHAPTER XVI 



Europe's welcome 

IN the preceding chapters I have described 
the conditions out of which the Revolution 
arose, its methods of working and its main 
features. Some idea may be gathered from 
this description of the internal difficulties which 
Turkey has had to face. But the Young 
Turks were not allowed to cope with these 
difficulties unembarrassed by foreign complica- 
tions. The Balkan Peninsula had long been 
recognised as the danger-point of Europe, and 
any change in the balance of power among the 
States directly interested was certain to bring 
trouble. It was to be expected — it was indeed 
inevitable — that the rulers of Turkey would have 
a crisis to face abroad as well as at home. It 
was none the less hard on them to have their 
attention distracted from home affairs in a time 
of extraordinary stress. 

217 



Turkey in Revolution 

To understand the relations of Young Turkey 
with the States of Europe during the revolu- 
tionary period, it is necessary to recall the chief 
events in the international sphere during the 
months preceding and following the grant of 
the Constitution. Reference has been made in 
these pages to the effect of the foreign situation 
in influencing and accelerating the new move- 
ment. Even before the famous 24th of July, that 
situation was already critical. In Macedonia, 
which had attracted the special attention of 
Europe, things had gone from bad to worse 
ever since the desperate Bulgar rising of 1903. 
The policy of reform, which Europe attempted 
to enforce from without, had not improved the 
lot of the subject peoples ; but it had resulted 
in sending into the country a number of foreign 
officials, through whom its distracted and miser- 
able condition became better known to the 
public outside, and more generally recognised 
as a scandal to the whole of Europe. The 
general uncertainty as to the future compelled 
the neighbouring Powers, some of whom cher- 
ished territorial ambitions, to insure against the 
possible developments of the future, some by 
preparing the way for a military advance, some 
by establishing a claim, based on the supposed 

218 



Europe's Welcome 

desire of the inhabitants of certain districts, 
which they might put forward in the event of 
a partition. Those who in England, France, 
and Italy were trying to arouse public opinion in 
the interest of the subject peoples of Macedonia, 
were never tired of pointing out that the question 
involved was not simply one of humanity. They 
urged again and again upon the diplomatic 
world that if nothing were done for the good 
government of European Turkey — guaranteed 
by the Powers, and especially by England, in 
the Treaty of Berlin — a disturbance would sooner 
or later occur which would threaten the peace 
of all Europe. At the end of 1905, on the 
initiative of Lord Lansdowne, a joint naval 
demonstration was made with the object of 
compelling the Porte to accept a new scheme of 
reforms. In 1907, when I visited Macedonia, 
a meeting of the foreign gendarmerie officers 
was taking place, at which the constant impedi- 
ments placed in their way by the authorities 
were being indignantly discussed, and demands 
were being formulated, to be presented in due 
course through the embassies at Constantinople. 

The first event, however, which seriously 
alarmed the diplomatic world was the sudden 
announcement that Austria- Hungary had secured 

219 



Turkey in Revolution 

from the Porte a concession for the survey of 
a railway through the sanjak of Novi-bazar. 
Small in itself, the event heralded the recru- 
descence of the eternal Near Eastern question 
in an acute form. Austria-Hungary had hitherto 
been associated with Russia as one of the 
mandatories of Europe in the work of carrying 
out reform in Macedonia. Protests had fre- 
quently been made against this policy, the two 
Powers concerned being notoriously wanting 
in reforming zeal. The protests had been 
answered by the double-edged argument that 
they were the tw T o great Powers most directly 
interested. It now appeared that the worst 
anticipations had been realised, and that Austria- 
Hungary, while ostensibly pursuing an altruistic 
end, had in reality been developing a project 
which would assist her territorial expansion. 
Her real desires at that time are of less import- 
ance for my present purpose than those which 
were attributed to her by outside opinion. 
She may have been innocent ; but her ambition 
was supposed to be to reach the JEgeam Sea ; 
Germany was supposed to be supporting it ; 
and Austria seemed to have been using her 
influence as a 4 ' reforming " Power to bargain 
with the Sultan for a material advantage of 

220 



Europe's Welcome 

immense importance. The proposed line, run- 
ning south-eastwards, would connect Serajevo 
in Bosnia with Mitrovitza in Turkey. The line 
from Mitrovitza to Salonica was already worked 
by an Austrian company ; an Austrian garrison 
was already stationed, by a curious provision 
of the Treaty of Berlin, side by side with the 
Turkish garrison in the sanjak of Novi-bazar ; 
the whole route, therefore, besides being direct 
and convenient, was already partially controlled. 

This proposal was immediately countered by 
another, which received the paternal countenance 
of Russia and the enthusiastic advocacy of Servia, 
for a railway which should connect the countries 
along the Danube with the Adriatic. It was to 
run south-westwards from Nisch in Servia, 
through Novi-bazar — where it would cross the 
Austrian line at right angles — to a port, probably 
San Giovanni di Medua, on the coast of 
Montenegro. But the new departure had a 
more serious and permanent effect in the 
estrangement of Austria- Hungary from Russia, 
and a tendency towards a new grouping of the 
great Powers. Austria was thrown more than 
ever into the arms of Germany, Russia into 
those of England. The Anglo- Russian entente, 
originally designed to settle certain frontier 

221 



Turkey in Revolution 

disputes in Asia, was beginning to affect for 
good or evil the situation in Europe. Of this 
result the meeting of the King and the Czar 
at Reval was regarded in the Near East as 
an obvious symptom. In the autumn of 1907 
the possibilities of Anglo-Russian action were 
being anxiously discussed in Constantinople, 
Athens, Sofia, and Bukharest, as well as in 
Vienna. An Anglo-Russian alliance with a 
strong anti-Turkish policy was the most 
moderate of the numerous anticipations which 
found credit in those quarters. It was borne 
out by the fresh pressure which the two Powers 
now brought to bear upon the Sultan's Govern- 
ment, with the object both of carrying out 
the reforms already granted, and of exacting the 
promise of new ones. 

This was the situation which existed at the 
beginning of July. The public and the news- 
papers were not discussing the reform of 
Turkey from within. Nothing was further 
from their minds than a Turkish Revolution. 
No one had ever heard of the Committee of 
Union and Progress. In the chancelleries of 
the great Powers far-reaching changes were 
contemplated, in which the will of Turkey 
herself was the one factor that was totally 

222 



Europe's Welcome 

eliminated. The small neighbouring States, 
Greece, Bulgaria, and Servia, for whom the 
Balkan question is not an element in the 
game of world-politics but a matter of life and 
death, were becoming more active and more 
alarmed than ever. Each had, among the 
subjects of the Porte, great numbers of blood- 
relations, whose fate was a matter of constant 
and pressing interest. A great impetus was 
given to the endeavour to peg out prospective 
claims in the doomed territory. The effete 
Turkish Government, in its turn, saw in this 
racial strife an admirable means, perhaps indeed 
the only chance, of maintaining itself in the 
saddle. The profitable struggle was encouraged 
the flames of national hatred were fanned, by 
every conceivable device. The Powers adminis- 
tered solemn reproofs, accompanied by threats, 
to the offending little States. They, in their 
turn, continued to assist their kinsmen, multiply 
their schools, or equip their bands. They had 
only one idea in common — the idea that Turkey 
was, in familiar phrase, the Sick Man. The 
fundamental question was the disposal of his 
heritage. 

The Turkish Revolution, therefore, introduced 
a wholly new factor into the Balkan situation. 

223 



Turkey in Revolution 

It not only changed the Turkish Government ; 
it cut away the assumption on which all the 
calculations of Europe had been based. Every- 
thing was thrown into the melting-pot ; intense 
excitement prevailed ; not content with the 
real cause for alarm, the neighbouring States 
were seized by every sort of imaginary terror. 
The new regime, of course, was officially wel- 
comed. England, the chief of the disinterested 
Powers, at once declared her cordial sympathy 
by the mouth of Sir Edward Grey. The other 
Powers followed suit. But the lull was only 
momentary. The new idea was that Turkey, 
instead of sinking further into decay, was going 
to become a strong, perhaps an aggressive 
State ; that she was likely to reassert her nominal 
sovereignty over the provinces from which her 
armies had been expelled by the Treaty of 
Berlin and the subsequent action of the Powers, 
but to which she still possessed, under interna- 
tional law, certain indefinable claims. This idea 
explains the various actions which now disturbed 
the peace of Europe. The storm burst suddenly. 
Bulgaria seized the section of the Oriental 
Railway, belonging to Turkey, which passes 
through Eastern Roumelia. On October 3rd 
Austria- Hungary announced her annexation of 

224 



Europe's Welcome 

Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Turks had 
just drawn attention to the position of Bulgaria 
as a tributary principality, by not inviting her 
representative to a diplomatic banquet ; she 
seized the opportunity, and declared her inde- 
pendence. Crete, not to be behindhand, 
immediately proclaimed her union with the 
kingdom of Greece. 



225 



p 



CHAPTER XVII 



WAR-CLOUDS 

NONE of these actions was altogether 
without excuse. Bulgaria had always 
regarded war with Turkey as a possible neces- 
sity ; it had sometimes seemed the only chance 
of a genuine settlement of the Macedonian 
question. It was for this that, with immense 
sacrifices, she had built up her Army. The 
necessity might remain, but the chance might 
be for ever removed. Her own hope of inde- 
pendence might be destroyed, her very exist- 
ence threatened. The Turks were believed 
to be making warlike preparations ; the 
Oriental Railway, which though leased to a 
company was the property of the Turkish 
Government, would facilitate an invasion. The 
non-invitation of M. Gueshoff, on the ground 
that the sovereign he represented was a vassal 
of the Sultan, seemed to show that Young 

227 



Turkey in Revolution 

Turkey was going to take a definite stand 
upon her legal rights. If Bulgaria was to act, 
she must act at once, and make her position 
clear from the outset. The declaration of 
independence had long been in the minds of 
the people ; it was now the result of a sudden 
resolution. The substantial change effected 
was slight, though the injury to Turkish 
prestige was undoubtedly serious. 

The same arguments might be used, though 
with much less force, to excuse the action of 
Austria. A strong Turkey might reassert its 
rights over Bosnia. In that province itself 
the Mohammedan population, joining hands 
with the Serbs of the Orthodox Church, might 
create a dangerous rising. It might be best 
for the peace, both of Austria herself and of 
Europe generally, to make things clear at once. 
She, too, might claim that her action, in point 
of fact, was merely a definite assertion of the 
status quo. She could point to the fact that, 
in announcing the annexation, she had at the 
same time given some compensation to Turkey 
by removing her garrison from Novi-bazar, and, 
by implication, renouncing any dreams that she 
might have entertained of expansion towards 
Salonica. In the minds, however, of indepen- 

228 



War-clouds 



dent observers, these considerations were out- 
weighed by others more important. Unlike 
Bulgaria, Austria could not plead a pressing 
national danger, nor a long-standing and 
deeply-rooted popular aspiration. Above all, 
unlike Bulgaria, she was a party to the Treaty 
of Berlin. The engagement, which she now 
suddenly tore up, was one into which she her- 
self had solemnly entered, in conjunction with 
the other great Powers. In the London Con- 
vention of 1 87 1 she had herself declared that 
no such engagement might be broken without 
the consent of all the signatories. The altera- 
tion she had made was avowedly for her own 
advantage alone, and her disregard of the 
sanctity of treaties was a far greater danger 
to European peace than was ever likely to 
have proceeded from Bosnian rebellion or 
Young Turk Chauvinism. 

The Cretan declaration was thrown into the 
shade by more exciting events. The majority 
of the Cretan population might have adopted 
the same line of argument as the States which 
they imitated. As a matter of substance, what 
they did was directed not so much against 
Turkey as against the four protecting Powers, 
England, France, Italy and Russia, who for 

229 



Turkey in Revolution 

years past had provided the de facto govern- 
ment of the island. The Greek Cabinet 
awaited the decision of these Powers, and 
took no step in response to the action taken 
in Crete. 

These events, which followed each other 
with startling rapidity in the autumn of 1908, 
created a dangerous crisis which might well 
have plunged Young Turkey into war. Her 
statesmen behaved with great moderation. 
They proposed a Conference of the Powers 
of Europe. In this proposal England strongly 
supported them, Sir Edward Grey declaring 
that his Government could not recognise any 
infringement whatever of Turkeys rights until 
it had formed the subject of calm and serious 
discussion by all the great Powers ; that 
Turkey herself, as the State which had suffered 
the injury, was the first to be consulted; and 
that the question of compensation, both for 
Turkey and for the Slav States which might 
have suffered from the changed situation, must 
form the chief part of the programme of the 
Conference. The new Turkish Government did 
not express any desire to assert its strictly 
legal but obviously shadowy claims, either in 
the provinces concerned or elsewhere. But the 

230 



THE LIFTING OF THE WAR-CLOUDS. 



[Kalem. 



This cartoon appeared when the prospects of peace with Austria and Bulgaria were 
brightening. It was called "the Lamentation of the Carrion-crow." 

[To face page 230. 



War-clouds 



injury done to their country's prestige at such 
a moment was deeply felt. One of the chief 
assets of the revolutionary movement was its 
appeal to patriotism ; it attacked the old govern- 
ment for endangering the integrity of the 
Empire ; and it was a severe shock to find 
that, in the first blush of success, they had 
to submit to losses which, though merely 
technical and formal, might be used against 
them by their internal enemies. To be plunged 
into any sort of foreign difficulties was em- 
barrassing in the extreme. They felt, further, 
that if a final settlement of all claims in 
respect of tribute or public debt was now to 
be made, and they were to be precluded from 
raising such matters in the future, it was 
essential that Turkey's demands should be 
exhaustively considered and fully satisfied. The 
urgent need of money to finance the necessary 
reforms at home made the problem an 
extremely practical one. 

The enthusiasm felt for England at this 
moment was very conspicuous. The " mani- 
festations " in front of the British embassy 
became quite embarrassing. Its garden would 
be invaded at frequent intervals by large 
crowds of excited but intensely serious people, 

231 



Turkey in Revolution 

bearing on tall poles the flags of Turkey, of 
England, and sometimes of France and Russia 
as well. Laudatory speeches would be delivered 
and applauded ; at last the door would open 
and a secretary would appear ; he would thank 
them in French for the honour done to the 
embassy, and briefly wish them good-night, 
while the demonstrators would shout with joy, 
as if the English fleet were already entering 
the Dardanelles. The enthusiasm was due to 
the immediate and definite declarations of the 
English Government. The support which they 
were giving was believed by instructed Turks 
to be moral and not material, but its value 
was recognised. It is indeed highly probable 
that it averted a war between Turkey on the 
one hand and Austria or Bulgaria, or both, on 
the other — a war which would almost certainly 
have destroyed constitutional Turkey after a 
life of about ten weeks. If it had not been 
for England, other Powers would almost cer- 
tainly have been encouraged to take more 
definitely hostile action; Russia would not have 
thrown her weight into the scale in favour of 
the new rdgime ; and it is in the highest degree 
unlikely that the Austrian dispute would have 
been settled, as it subsequently was, by a sub- 

232 



War-clouds 



stantial payment to Turkey. We were more 
than benevolently neutral ; we took a risk 
which some considered too great, but which 
the event justified. 

Turkey herself was the State most intimately 
concerned in the questions now raised ; for the 
very existence of the new rigime was at stake. 
But she became the centre of complications which 
involved in a greater or less degree every Euro- 
pean Power. The political atmosphere of Europe 
became charged with electricity, and all eyes were 
turned for a time on Constantinople. 

The period with which this book is concerned 
became one of constant excitement and of inter- 
mittent negotiations. Public attention in Turkey 
itself was unduly distracted from home affairs, 
and concentrated on the disputes with Bulgaria 
and Austria. Abroad, the subject of the pro- 
posed Conference was continually discussed, since 
it involved an international question of universal 
interest, arising out of the recent breaches of the, 
public law of Europe. It seemed possible, how- 
ever, at the end of the year, that the Conference 
might find most of its work finished before it met, 
through the settlement of the various claims by 
negotiation between the parties directly con- 
cerned. 

233 



Turkey in Revolution 

Turkeys strictly legal claim on Bulgaria 
amounted to about ^22,000,000. It included 
claims on account of the Oriental Railway ; of 
the tribute for Bulgaria, an obligation imposed 
by the Treaty of Berlin ; of the tribute for 
Eastern Roumelia, fixed at ,£240,000 a year ; 
and of a share of the Ottoman Debt, alleged 
to be represented by permanent works of which 
the benefit had accrued to Bulgaria. But the 
strictly legal claim was obviously absurd. The 
Bulgarian tribute had never been fixed, and 
though statements and promises by Prince Fer- 
dinand were quoted as evidence of intended pay- 
ment, not a penny had been paid ; of the Eastern 
Roumelian tribute only half had been paid, and 
as this had gone into the pockets of the bond- 
holders, Turkey had, unfortunately for her, dis- 
played little interest in the matter ; while the 
value, and even the existence, of the permanent 
works represented by the Debt was seriously 
questioned. It was recognised that some balance 
must be struck, on rough and practical lines, 
between Turkey's urgent need of money and 
Bulgaria's ability to pay. The dilatoriness dis- 
played by both sides was calculated to aggravate 
the quarrel. But there were good hopes of a 
settlement ; there was an absence of bitterness 

234 



War-clouds 



in the popular feeling towards Bulgaria ; and the 
Turkish Parliament received a warm message, 
which it welcomed heartily, from the Bulgarian 
Sobranye. 

Unfortunately, the quarrel with Austria could 
not be narrowed down to a purely financial issue. 
The feeling against her was bitter. It was not 
less deep because it was largely sentimental. 
That a Power which signed the Berlin Treaty, 
and was entrusted by Europe as one of its man- 
datories to carry out reform in Macedonia, should 
seize the moment of Turkey's gravest internal 
difficulties to strike a heavy blow at her prestige, 
was regarded as a serious proof of hostility. 
Popular sentiment took a remarkable shape. 
It occurred to one of the Young Turk leaders 
to propose a general boycott of all Austrian 
goods. The idea was taken up with enthusiasm, 
and carried out with such completeness that 
many Austrian traders were ruined. Austrian 
shops were watched by "pickets," who warned 
the people against entering them. The Austrian- 
Lloyd steamers could not land their cargoes ; the 
porters on the quays would not touch them. In 
the windows of many retail traders, who had 
pledged themselves to sell nothing Austrian, a 
large framed placard was displayed bearing the 

235 



Turkey in Revolution 

words, " Avis au public. Diplome de Participa- 
tion, delivre par le Syndicat de Boycotage contre 
les marchandises autrichiennes." Sugar, which is 
largely imported from Austria, rose 60 per cent, 
in price. It was borne cheerfully. 

The most conspicuous sign of the boycott was 
the substitution of grey woollen caps of various 
descriptions for the hitherto universal red fez ; 
the fezzes being chiefly manufactured in Austria. 

The difficult problem raised by the annexation 
of Bosnia, so far as it affected Servia, Monte- 
negro, the Slav provinces of Austria, and the 
Bosnian population itself, need not concern us ; 
but unfortunately it involved Turkey in its 
meshes. A demand was put forward by the 
Servian Skupshtina, or Parliament, at the end of 
the year, that Bosnia should become an autono- 
mous province, guaranteed by Europe, under the 
suzerainty of the Sultan. It was, perhaps, rather 
a counterblast to the apparent apathy of the 
Russian Government, from which much had been 
expected, than a responsible Parliamentary utter- 
ance. But it was in a sense an appeal to Turkey, 
whose people could hardly forget that they had 
held sovereignty over Bosnia for centuries ; and 
it was said that a revolutionary committee in 
Bosnia itself, representing an alliance of the 

236 




THE BOYCOTT. [Kalem. 

" The Emperor of Austria, anxious to counteract the effects 
of the boycott, takes to wearing the fez, in order to encourage 
his subjects to adopt this head-dress, of which large stocks are 
left on the owners' hands." 

[To face page 236. 



War-clouds 



Moslems and the Orthodox Serbs, had put for- 
ward as its policy the same demand. Servia 
assiduously cultivated Turkish friendship ; she 
proposed an agreement for the development of 
Novi-bazar by mutual free trade ; and she illus- 
trated the somewhat artificial character of her 
nationalist propaganda in Macedonia by suddenly 
dropping it. A rising in Bosnia might, it was 
expected, attract great sympathy in Turkey, 
draw a swarm of volunteers from Albania, and if 
combined with a war between Servia and Austria, 
might involve the Turkish Government in the 
struggle. 

Fortunately, after some months of negotiation, 
Austria-Hungary offered a sum of £T2, 500,000 
as compensation for the state properties in 
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and this was wisely 
accepted by the Turkish Government. The 
boycott ceased ; the most pressing danger was 
removed ; and it was difficult to see why, now 
that the present dispute was settled, there should 
be anything else to quarrel over. 



237 



PART III 



CHAPTER XVIII 



THE WISE AND PRUDENT 

OU are young," said the Man of Business, 



A as he leaned over the table after supper 
one night in the big restaurant. It was crowded 
with people, mostly in fezzes, each little group 
surrounding a small white table ; but the floor- 
space, thickly strewn with sawdust, was wide, 
and we could talk with as much privacy and ease 
as if we had been alone. His fat cigar added 
density to the general fog of cigarette smoke 
which overhung the tables. " You are young, 
and I have lived in this place for five-and-twenty 
years. If any one is to be trusted on difficult 
questions such as these, I should think it is I." 

I have often thought with surprise and thank- 
fulness how ready people are to communicate 
information. It is so much easier, and obviously 




239 



J Hi 

If If] [Ik 



Turkey in Revolution 

so much more advantageous, to listen than to 
talk, and when you go about the world you find 
in every place people only too ready to do the 
talking and let you do the listening. Hence this 
chapter of interviews, as to which I will only say, 
to prevent misconceptions, that none of the per- 
sons interviewed are Englishmen. 

The Man of Business leaned forward with both 
arms on the table, his round head, with its short 
hair, heavy moustache, and rubicund complexion, 
thrust towards me with an expression of paternal 
kindliness. 

"The whole thing is in confusion," he resumed. 
There are three different governments going on. 
There is the nominal Government ; then there is 
the Committee, which pulls the strings behind 
the scenes ; and last, but most important of all, 
there are the workmen, who since the Revolution 
have begun to think themselves the lords of crea- 
tion. Wages have gone up with a bound in all 
the skilled trades, and you have to give in or else 
throw up your business." 

" But won't things settle down ? " 

"Not the most important things. There will 
always be a muddle. The one thing the Turk 
can never understand is economics. He has all 
sorts of ideas as to what has got to be done. He 

240 



The Wise and Prudent 



is a warrior first of all, so he wants plenty of 
soldiers, well paid, and plenty of guns and battle- 
ships. He thinks there must also be plenty of 
officials ; plenty of public buildings ; streets 
properly paved ; electric lights ; policemen ; and 
goodness knows what. But he never asks who 
is going to produce the money to pay for it all. 
There is plenty of wealth in this country ; but 
it can only be utilised by giving a fair field to 
foreigners ; and that the Turks won't do. They 
keep you a year before they decide anything, and 
then hamper and worry you at every turn. What 
will be the result ? Things will go gaily for a 
time. All sorts of excellent proposals will be 
made, reforms begun, and so forth. The people 
will be taught to expect the Millennium. And 
then some fine day they will suddenly discover 
that there is not enough in the Treasury to pay 
the Army, much less reform the government. 
The Millennium is all very well, so long as 
you can finance it. 

" These things are deeply rooted, you know." 
The Man of Business leaned forward still further, 
and enforced his explanation with curious gestures 
of his fists, as if he were trying to turn a very 
stiff screw. "What the Turks really lack is 
continuity of ideas. It is one thing to-day and 

241 Q 



Turkey in Revolution 

another thing to-morrow. Look at these Com- 
mittee fellows. A lot of them have been abroad 
— knocked about in Paris and Berlin, and so on. 
They have absorbed foreign ideas, and when 
they talk to you, you think they are people 
like yourself. They are wonderful people at 
taking things in, I grant you that. They are 
like sponges. In France they absorb liberty. In 
Germany they absorb efficiency. But look what 
is happening now. They are all coming back to 
Turkey, and here they will absorb the same old 
happy-go-lucky methods that they started with. 

" Yes ! " he resumed, after a pause ; " don't you 
be in too much of a hurry to repent what you 
have said in the past about the inability of the 
Turks to govern. I am sorry for it ; I wish well 
to the new regime. They are fine fellows, some 
of them ; but it will all come to nothing. Come 
back here in five or six years, and you will see 
very few traces left. I think I know these 
people." 

I could not help thinking of the Man of 
Business and the " continuity of ideas " when, 
a few days later, I was talking to my friend the 
Diplomat in the smoking-carriage of the Orient 
Express. He was a short but rather stout man, 
with a neatly-trimmed grey moustache. He wore 

242 



The Wise and Prudent 



spectacles, and almost always looked straight 
before him, watching the smoke rise from the 
very long and thin cheroot which he took after 
each meal. The wicker armchairs, which you 
can move about so as to command the best view 
through the windows, are very comfortable, and 
our talks, if depressing to me, were always 
pleasant. 

" The Turks are essentially conservative, as 
everybody who knows them has always said. 
They never change. It is a very obvious thing 
to say, but it is true ; in fact, it is the only certain 
thing that can be said about them. No Oriental 
ever really changes." 

" What do you make of the members of the 
Committee ? " 

" I do not know any of them," he replied ; 
" but they do not form any exception to the rule. 
They must be extraordinarily capable people, and 
the way they have turned things upside down, 
for the moment, has astonished everybody. 
Certainly, too, they are playing up well, and 
making a very good show of democratic ideas 
and constitutional government. One needs to 
have been a great deal in the East to see through 
that kind of thing. It is very easy to be deceived 
at first. At bottom, they are utterly ignorant of 

243 



Turkey in Revolution 

constitutional principles. They don't want to 
give equality to all races. How could they ? 
Their whole history is against it. It is as 
impossible for them as it would be for you 
English to grant real equality to the natives of 
India, and put them on a level with the whites. 
You would say, and say with perfect justice, that 
the real foundation of your rule in India is an 
idea — the idea of the superiority of the whites. 
So it is with the Turk — every Turk. The only 
difference between the Old Turk and the Young 
Turk is that the latter understands the European 
situation, and the former does not. They are all 
equally clever at using smooth words, but it's 
only the Young Turks who see the urgent 
necessity of using that particular kind of smooth 
words which we are thinking of. They see that 
the only chance for them is to pose before Europe 
as a people which is capable of reforming its 
government. It is England who, for the moment, 
is playing the pro-Turk game. Therefore, the 
particular attitude towards self-government must 
be the English attitude. True, General Botha 
as a Prime Minister is rather a hard nut for 
them to crack ; but they can always turn the 
conversation to Ireland, and sympathise with 
you over that." 

244 



The Wise and Prudent 



" You don't see any signs of real fundamental 
change ? " 

" No, I cannot say that I do. Indeed, such a 
thing is impossible. You think too much of 
politics ; there are things much deeper than that. 
Our work is only on the surface ; we only follow 
the direction of the great currents. Look at the 
things which really make the Turks what they 
are. Look at their social life ; look at their 
homes ; look at their women. The Turk goes 
out to his daily occupation ; he muddles or daw- 
dles through it ; and then he goes home again. 
I should not have said " social life." There is 
none. He is not influenced by his fellow-men. 
He is influenced by his women. And what do 
you think their influence is ? Why, they hold 
him by a string. He may talk in the cafe in 
the middle of the day about liberty and fraternity ; 
but at sunset there comes a pull of the string, and 
he is back again in a world altogether different — 
a world that is dominated by the feminine spirit. 
The Turkish women are not the slaves of custom ; 
they are its willing servants, its votaries, its 
priestesses. I don't deny that there was a sort 
of faint vibration, a shiver, as it were, of the 
liberal movement, among the women. You saw 
how for a week or two they threw off their veils 

245 



Turkey in Revolution 

and went to the theatre and so on. But what 
came of it ? That is the real point. The mob 
stopped the carriages and pulled them out ; they 
got frightened ; they put on their veils again ; 
the whole thing shrivelled up like a burst balloon. 
That was the end of the women's rights move- 
ment ; the end of the men's will come slower, but 
it will come." 

Not long afterwards I was talking to a Turkish 
gentleman of aristocratic birth and many accom- 
plishments, who had lived for the last ten years 
in Paris. He did not relieve the depression into 
which my other friends had thrown me, although 
many of his arguments were of so opposite a 
tendency to theirs that I derived some comfort 
from cancelling them out. His house was 
palatial, his furniture resplendent with gilt. The 
tea, in glasses placed in small metal stands with 
elegant handles, struck me as a peculiarly insipid 
beverage, but the cigarettes which accompanied 
it were of the very finest. He was very neat and 
modern in his dress, and a brilliant and emphatic 
talker. 

" I see that you were entertained by the Com- 
mittee of Union and Progress the other day," he 
said. " I think it is important that you should 
look at them from an outside point of view, as 



The Wise and Prudent 



1 do. Mind you, I say nothing against their 
conduct in the past. They have done great 
things. It was they who brought about the 
Revolution. For a long time they enjoyed great 
popularity, and they deserved it. But to-day 
they are losing their reputation. They are 
becoming a tyranny. The people are getting 
tired of them." 

M But surely their position could not well be 
stronger than it is ? They have still got the 
support of the Army." 

" Yes, they worked the Army very cleverly," 
he admitted, "but things are changing rapidly. 
They are clever enough ; the only question is 
whether they are not too clever. What the 
people see is that they are interfering too much 
with the Government. What is the good of 
having responsible Ministers if they are not their 
own masters ? Government by constitutional 
methods is one thing ; government by a masonic 
society is another. But matters are worse than 
this. You have not yet grasped the inwardness 
of the situation. Why do you think they have 
kept the Sultan at the head of affairs, and are 
even making much of him ? " 

I confessed that I had no explanation to offer, 
except the obvious and stupid one that to 

247 



Turkey in Revolution 

supersede the Sultan might have provoked 
reaction. 

" There I am afraid you are wrong," said my 
friend. " They are keeping the Sultan in his 
place in order that they may have an excuse for 
continuing in power themselves. They want it 
to appear that there is a great danger of reaction ; 
that a counterbalancing force is required. Then 
they can say to the people, ' We are indispen- 
sable, you cannot do without us.' " 

" Then you do not believe in this danger of 
reaction ? " 

" Certainly not," he replied. " Let me explain 
the position to you a little more fully. The 
Committee is apparently a great liberal force, 
because it takes care to pose as the one power- 
ful enemy of reaction. But, as a matter of fact, 
the Committee is not liberal. Its members do 
not understand the ideas of the West." 

" Have they not tried, at least, to put them 
into practice ? " 

" No more than they could help. The 
Christian races are an element of vital importance 
to our country, yet they have hardly put a single 
Christian into any official position, though many 
changes have been made. Look again at the 
result of the elections, which we can to some 

248 



The Wise and Prudent 



extent foresee already. The Christians will 
certainly not obtain their fair share in the govern- 
ment of the Empire. The Committee is not for 
genuine equality. It talks about the Ottoman 
idea ; in reality it is pro-Turk." 

"What is the remedy?" 

" I do not want to oust these young gentlemen, 
but there is need of a new party. That new 
party, I believe, already exists, or at any rate 
the nucleus of it exists, in the Union Liberale. 
The Union owes its existence, as you know, to 
the influence of Prince Saba-ed-din. It aims at 
putting the non-Turk races — the Arabs and the 
Kurds as much as the Christians — in a position 
of absolute equality with the Turks, as citizens 
of the Ottoman Empire. It will not advocate 
autonomy, but it will give increased powers to 
the local councils. That is the way in which the 
aspirations of the various peoples after self- 
government ought to be realised. I admit that 
this party has very little power at present, but it 
will rally to its side the genuine Liberals among 
the members of the Committee itself, and you 
will find them in a few years, if not immediately, 
working by the side of the more moderate 
Christian deputies." 

The Journalist, whom I met often, took a 
249 



Turkey in Revolution 

somewhat different line. We generally talked 
in the big vestibule at the hotel, where the 
coming and going of visitors was so constant 
that it became a sort of background to our 
conversation, without interrupting it. It was 
even a sort of stimulus, and I used to watch 
with some interest the way that my companion, 
without breaking the tenor of his utterances, 
would glance round from time to time, and 
would sometimes receive some suggestion, which 
I could distinctly trace, even from faces and 
forms which he did not know. I believe that 
this habit of looking round to see who was near 
was really contracted in a long residence at 
Constantinople under the old regime, when spies 
were everywhere. I remember that on a previous 
visit the hotel porter used sometimes to complain 
to us that the spies were so numerous that they 
incommoded the visitors by blocking up the 
vestibule. 

" I am perfectly certain that these people 
mean well," was the phrase with which the 
Journalist generally began. He would often 
bring it in several times, especially after he 
had described with vividness and in detail some 
barrier which he considered as insurmountable ; 
regarding it, I suppose, as a counterpoise, a 

250 



The Wise and Prudent 



certain comfort for himself, at least, in the face 
of a future which he saw to be dark. " They 
talk a great deal about justice and equality, and 
they are perfectly genuine. Yes, and the hojas 
who drive about in carriages with the Greek and 
Armenian priests are perfectly genuine too in 
their ideas of fraternisation ; and the mollahs who 
offered up prayers at that memorial service over 
the graves of the Armenians were genuine. 
And so are the people. They think it is all a 
grand affair. These ideas do appeal to some- 
thing in them, whatever they may mean in their 
minds — or in ours, or any one else's, for the 
matter of that. 

" What do they mean, though ? " he resumed. 
" That's the real question, of course." He 
pushed himself back in his chair, stooping more 
than ever, his clean-shaven face, narrow but 
with rather a heavy jaw, wearing a puzzled 
expression. " These Committee fellows have got 
a lot of power. What are they going to do ? 
What do they tell you they are going to do ? " 

I repeated one or two scraps of recent con- 
versation, in order to set him going again. He 
took up the thread, speaking thoughtfully, and 
with a rather far-away look. 

" The Patriarchate may not be an ideal insti- 
251 



Turkey in Revolution 

tution, but at any rate it is an old one. For 
good or evil, whatever the reasons may have 
been, they have given these rights to the Greek 
Church, and the rights have been exercised for 
centuries. I daresay some extra-legal rights may 
have arisen of late years ; never mind ; they have 
been accepted. Now there is talk of curtailing 
these things. The Greek is to be on the same 
level with the rest, it seems, and is to become 
not a Greek, but an Ottoman. The Turks are 
in for trouble if they take that line. The Greeks 
are quite ready to be loyal subjects, and to feel 
a certain respect and attachment for the Govern- 
ment. But to think that all this is going to 
supersede their notions about nationality is 
simply a dream. The schools question is 
awfully dangerous. The first Young Turk pro- 
gramme seemed to threaten to make Turkish 
the language of instruction in all the primary 
schools. They have modified that since, but if 
they act on that sort of idea they will destroy all 
they have done. 

" Why are there only four Macedonian Bulgars 
in the Parliament ? " he asked suddenly, with an 
indignant flash in his eyes. " And one or two of 
those are Sandansky's men, who threw them- 
selves into the arms of the Committee at the 

252 



The Wise and Prudent 

start. They would never have been put up by 
their own fellow-countrymen, and don't represent 
them. Of course, I know that the Committee 
could have kept out almost every Christian 
deputy, if they had chosen. I give them credit 
for letting in any at all, when they had such 
power in their hands. But the Macedonian 
representation is all wrong, according to our 
notions, however much they may talk about 
justice. Certainly they began well, as far as 
order was concerned, by punishing Moslems 
who had committed crimes against Christians ; 
but there is ominous talk, now, about their being 
afraid to keep it up. Do they understand what 
you mean, when you tell them that you and your 
friends only support them because they are the 
people of order and good government ? Do 
they understand that this question of the equal 
punishment of crime is absolutely vital ? It's a 
matter of psychology. If once the popular idea 
that the Government in Macedonia is just and 
strong begins to break down, the door is open 
for all the old intrigues ; and if once they get 
on to the downward slope they will probably 
never be able to right themselves again. 

" Heaven knows, they have difficulties enough 
before them," he continued, " without adding any 

253 



Turkey in Revolution 

of their own making. The old mollahs are un- 
commonly quiet at the present time. Flags and 
hurrahs are the order of the day, and nobody 
who is not a Young Turk cares to speak out. 
It doesn't follow that there are not plenty who 
will begin to complain, when the first excitement 
has worn off. If real liberty is given it will be 
as easy to express an opinion one way as the 
other. The time will come before long when 
they will say to themselves, 'We have had 
enough of these young intellectuals. What 
have they done for us, with their equality and 
their modern notions?' No, the old world, the 
religious world especially, has not spoken yet. 

"Then look at the administration; the 
finances are still in chaos. Then there are the 
Asiatic provinces. I believe things are really 
quieting down in Kurdistan and the Yemen, 
but you can't get any real news, and disorders 
may break out again at any moment. And 
how can the Empire be carried on without 
honest officials ? There isn't a single man with 
experience in administration who has not been 
a servant of the old Government — brought up in 
its atmosphere from the beginning of his career. 
It's a truism," he added with a smile. " But it's 
a tremendous fact and it has got to be faced. 

254 



The Wise and Prudent 

"All this is a bad look out for them, but it 
is a good look out for any man or men who 
want to smash the new rdgime." He spread 
out his long fingers, moving them nervously 
about the arms of his chair. " Who knows 
what is going on? There are plenty of people 
interested in reaction. Who was behind that 
row at Beshiktash ? It was supposed to be 
a protest against the marriage of a Greek with 
a Turkish widow. But Greeks have married 
Turks before now. That wasn't enough to 
provoke a popular tumult in which scores of 
people plunged their knives into the murdered 
man's body, and fifty soldiers stood by and did 
nothing. No. Some one was putting it about 
that the Constitution meant the overthrow of 
the old distinctions, and the mingling of the 
Moslem blood with the Giaour. Who started 
the fire in Stamboul ? It certainly wasn't an 
accident. It began in half a dozen places at 
the same time. You saw the murder of Mahir 
Pasha the other day. You know he was the 
smartest man in the Secret Service, and all but 
nipped the Revolution in the bud. Was that 
murder a mere private revenge, or was he up 
to his old games again ? Suppose disorder 
could be started afresh, somehow or other, by 

255 



Turkey in Revolution 

playing on the people's disappointment or what 
not. Supposing we had Article 113 of the 
Constitution put in force — the state of siege 
proclaimed ; the right of exile revived ; the 
whole Government placed outside the control of 
the Parliament." 

" All this seems rather roundabout," I said. 

" Yes," he answered, "it is roundabout. But 
if things are destined to go a certain way, and 
you shift them out of it for a moment, they 
work themselves back again somehow or other. 
Is Turkey destined either to be governed by 
a despotism, or else to break up ? Was the 
Sultan right after all ? Was his way the only 
way, bad as it was ? Who knows ? " 



256 



CHAPTER XIX 



PROSPECTS 




HAT is it coming to ? Is the new 



questions. I have endeavoured for the most 
part to state facts, rather than draw conclusions. 
Yet this problem of the future is the most 
interesting of all. The Revolution itself, what- 
ever its consequences may be, will be recorded 
as a unique event in past history ; but the 
question whether the Constitution will last 
involves the future misery or prosperity of 
millions. 

Every observer, at any rate, is exercising 
himself over the problem, and the opinions of 
the best informed witnesses are among the 
important facts of the present situation. Among 
men of long residence in Turkey whose views 
I have had the opportunity of hearing, the 



257 



R 



Turkey in Revolution 

balance inclines distinctly to the favourable side. 
Out of the seven, whose prophecies I should 
value most highly, only two are quite definitely 
pessimistic. Another, while emphasising the 
need of caution and the danger of being too 
positive, describes himself as " approaching 
semi-certainty " that the Young Turks will 
succeed. I think that in the case of foreign 
residents in Turkey a favourable opinion should 
carry somewhat more weight than an unfavour- 
able. A man who has lived for many years 
in the country and come to the conclusion, as 
most of such men have done, that any con- 
siderable change in the Turkish government 
was quite impossible, experiences a mental 
shock at the sudden overthrow of his former 
beliefs, and tends to justify himself by assert- 
ing that, at any rate, the change is merely 
superficial, that it cannot last, that he cannot 
be permanently wrong. 

Two alternatives, the complete success of the 
Young Turk regime, and its complete collapse 
owing to internal difficulties or foreign compli- 
cations, suggest themselves at the first glance. 
But reflexion shows that there are many other 
possibilities, and that the field of prophecy is 
very wide. A Chauvinistic Turk party, while 

258 



Prospects 

not restoring the despotism, might so far control 
the government as to establish an orderly and 
fairly efficient bureaucracy, which would main- 
tain the political ascendency of the Turks over 
all the other races of the Empire. Under such 
conditions the position of the Turks would 
approximate to that of the Magyars in Hungary. 
Much suffering would be removed, and economic 
progress would be possible ; but the just aspira- 
tions of the subject races would have less 
chance of realisation than ever. 

Or again, it might happen that the Revolu- 
tion, while successful in Constantinople and in 
Asia Minor, might fail to set up a just govern- 
ment in the border provinces, both European 
and Asiatic. The conclusion so generally 
accepted until recently, that the Turks can 
manage their own affairs, but not those of 
other peoples, may prove to be still true. An 
unwise policy of curtailing the privileges of the 
Christians or of interfering with the local self- 
government of the Arabs, might give rise to 
disorder. Disorder, in its turn, might be made 
the excuse for restoring the despotism ; and we 
might see the history of the Roman Empire 
repeated, with the quieter central provinces 
controlled by the Parliament, and those on the 

259 



Turkey in Revolution 

frontier, in which a stronger and more centra- 
lised rule was supposed to be needed, given 
back to the direct command of the monarch. 

Nor must one lose sight of a third possibility, 
that the new spirit might permeate the Empire 
to an extent just sufficient to prevent Europe 
from interfering, but still leave many serious 
evils unremedied. The officials might be a 
little more honest, the gendarmerie a little more 
efficient, the taxes a little more regularly col- 
lected ; but the courts of justice might remain 
unreformed, the balance be inclined always in 
favour of the Moslem, and the utilisation of 
national rivalries be still cultivated as an art 
of government. In such circumstances, the 
friendship of England for Turkey would be 
attacked in this country by a vigorous section 
of public opinion. It would become a delicate 
question for the Foreign Secretary of the day, 
whether to use England's friendship, or rather 
the threat of withdrawing it, as a means of 
persuasion with the Turkish Government, or on 
the other hand to return frankly to the policy, 
which prevailed up to 1908, of definite opposition 
and compulsion. 

Any of these things may happen, and the 
best way of helping the constitutional move- 

260 



Prospects 

ment and promoting the true interests of the 
Turkish Empire is to show that we are alive 
to all the possibilities, and that whatever support 
we are enabled to give will be dependent on 
the real fulfilment of the Young Turk pro- 
gramme. No one is more anxious than the 
Young Turks themselves that a high standard 
should be demanded of them ; that their friends 
in Europe, while appreciating their difficulties, 
should not be contented with the second best. 

When these reserves have been made, it is 
only fair to state fully the grounds for hoping 
that their best aspirations will be realised. In 
estimating the future, it is not fair to forget the 
history of the immediate past. Order has been 
kept under the most trying circumstances. The 
fraternisation of the different races, the first 
ecstasies of which might have been interpreted 
as a passing madness, has continued — at least, in 
its main features — and has impressed upon the 
popular imagination a new and fruitful idea. 
Fear has been lifted ; thought has been stimu- 
lated ; corruption has been partially checked. 
And all this has lasted for six months, during 
most of which time the sky has been overcast by 
a dangerous and exciting crisis in foreign affairs. 
The foreign policy, under the guidance of the 

261 



Turkey in Revolution 

Grand Vizier, has been stable, and there is on 
all hands a recognition of the imperative need 
of peace. 

Next, practically all observers agree that the 
intentions of the Young Turks, and of the Com- 
mittee of Union and Progress in particular, are 
good. Their desire to treat the Christians justly 
and to unite all races is a genuine one. In the 
elections, though they fell far short of ideal fair- 
ness, they deliberately abstained from using the 
power which they undoubtedly possessed of 
excluding almost all Christian deputies. 

Some think that they will find financial diffi- 
culties too much for them. Certainly these 
difficulties are immense. For some years they 
will probably have to face a deficit of some 
^3,000,000 per annum on a budget of, say, 
^20,000,000. But their promptness in engaging 
foreign help, to which reference was made in a 
previous chapter, proves that they are alive 
to their real needs. It is unsafe to prophesy, 
when so many accepted notions about the 
capacity of the Turks are in process of falsifi- 
cation. 

A deeper and harder problem still remains. 
The intentions of the Young Turks may be 
faultless, and yet they may be unable to carry 

262 



Prospects 

the mass of the people with them. Is there a 
force of inertia which they cannot move, a solid 
wall of prejudice which they cannot break down ? 
Some reasons for answering in the affirmative 
have been suggested in the last chapter. They 
must be borne in mind ; but there is something 
to be said on the other side. 

The first and greatest safeguard for Turkey's 
future is the prevailing detestation of the 
odious past. All classes, high and low, what- 
ever their differences of opinion, seem to be 
united in a common horror at the idea of re- 
turning to the old regime. The improvement 
affected by the Revolution has been so deep, 
it has been felt so definitely in almost every 
department of life, that a powerful bulwark has 
already been built up against reaction. There 
has been no clear evidence of any reactionary 
movement. 

Next, there is, in European Turkey at any 
rate, a widespread conviction that the old system 
of government was leading rapidly to the dis- 
ruption of the Empire. The appeal of the 
Young Turk movement to patriotism is very 
strong. If they do not conduct the government 
on lines which commend themselves to the 
great Powers, they believe that the European 

263 



Turkey in Revolution 

provinces will be lost. This is felt even by 
those to whom liberal ideas are distasteful. 
They see the necessity of adopting them, if only 
to escape the greater evil. This, they feel, is 
the last chance. 

Another point on which great stress ought 
to be laid is that the Young Turks have the 
support of the Army. It was not in vain that 
the Committee devoted its first efforts to winning 
over the officers to the revolutionary cause. It 
is conceivable that some regiments might be 
won back again to the side of the despotism ; 
but it is quite certain that, when the despotism 
was in its hour of danger, not a single soldier 
could be found to fight for it. Unlike the armies 
of most countries, the Turkish Army is a liberal 
element in politics. The officers are proud of 
their general education, and the inefficiency of 
the former Government has wounded their pro- 
fessional pride. Any one who wished to create 
a reactionary movement would have to reckon 
with the fact that the ablest officers would take 
the field against it. 

Behind all this lies a subject on which volumes 
might be written — the influence of Western ideas 
upon Turkey, and the changes which recent 
years have seen in popular feeling. It is part 

264 



Prospects 

of the problem — perhaps the greatest political 
problem of our time — whether the East can 
awake ; whether the mysterious movement which 
has placed Japan among the foremost Powers, 
has stirred China and India and Egypt, has 
created a demand for progress in Asiatic Russia, 
and shaken the throne of the Shah in Teheran, 
is merely a passing gust which troubles the 
surface, or is the symptom of a mighty current 
destined to change the course of civilisation. In 
Turkey, during the past thirty years, elementary 
education has made a great advance, and the 
schools which we visited in the capital would 
have surprised those who think that Turkey is 
now what it was in the time of Kinglake. The 
very sight of the railways and the telegraphs 
and the steamers — so the Turks themselves say 
— has had an effect upon the old happy-go-lucky 
methods of thinking and of doing business. But 
such generalities make less impression on the 
mind of the foreigner than the particular ex- 
amples of a changed attitude which happen 
to have come under his notice. Veneration for 
the person of the Sultan is beginning to be tem- 
pered by a clearer appreciation of facts ; at 
Salonica, after the Revolution, the soldiers aban- 
doned the universal custom of giving three 

265 



Turkey in Revolution 

volleys of cheers for the Sultan at sunset — the 
familiar cry of ' ' Padishah chok yasha!" In 
the social position of women slow but definite 
changes are taking place. A woman is only 
allowed to see her relations ; but the word " re- 
lations " is interpreted more and more widely, 
and is coming to include first and second and 
third cousins. A woman must only be spoken 
to through the veil ; but you will be told that the 
veil is only the "veil of modesty." Toleration 
appears in unexpected quarters. During the 
Greek Revolution in the 'twenties of the nine- 
teenth century, there were massacres of unoffend- 
ing Greeks in Turkey. During the Greco- 
Turkish War of 1897, on tne other hand, eleven 
Greeks went off from a village on the Sea of 
Marmora to fight for Greece ; on their return 
home they were not even jeered at by their 
fellow-villagers. 

There are many signs, indeed, that the secular 
hatred of Moslem and Christian is, on some 
points and in some places, disappearing. A 
strong and just Government could help the 
process. The liberal movement in Mohamme- 
danism is beginning to permeate the common 
people. Yet there are ominous symptoms which 
it would be folly to disregard. At times such 

266 



Prospects 

as this the beginnings of disorder are dangerous 
out of all proportion to their actual extent. The 
old fanatical spirit is certainly not altogether 
dead, either in Armenia or Macedonia. The 
Young Turks mean well ; and the very reports 
which tell now and then of cases of political 
crime show also that the representatives of the 
new regime are working honestly in the interests 
of order ; where crime has gone unpunished it 
is from the inefficiency of the police administra- 
tion, a legacy of the old regime. The Young 
Turks can reform it, unless, after casting off the 
malignant character of the former Government, 
they retain its fatal slackness. Their friends, 
who are also the friends of all the sorely tried 
peoples of Turkey, cannot yet relax their 
vigilance. 



267 



CHAPTER XX 



IN THE CRIMEAN CEMETERY 

EVERY English tourist in Constantinople 
visits the Crimean Cemetery. It lies 
across the Bosphorus at Scutari, on the verge 
of Asia. Here were established the military- 
hospitals which received the human wreckage 
of the great war. Here the transports, after 
crossing the Black Sea, set down the wounded. 
It was here that Florence Nightingale won a 
name which is cherished still. It was here 
that they buried the men, both high and low, 
who never went home to England. The place 
is carefully kept. Green grass is a rare thing 
in Constantinople, but here the sward is watered 
throughout the burning summer, and refreshes 
the eyes with its unwonted greenness as it 
slopes down under shady trees towards the 
margin of the sea. In the middle a stately 
obelisk commemorates the great national sacri- 

269 



Turkey in Revolution 

fice ; but on every side are scattered the 
graves of seven thousand British dead — some 
under polished and inscribed tombstones, some 
mingled in a common resting-place without a 
name. The famous battles, Inkerman, the 
Alma, Balaclava, find their record here upon the 
tombs of those who survived them only to 
die. The epitaph, " Died of disease contracted 
before Sebastopol," is a common one. 

I know no sadder place than this. Judged 
by its tangible results, the Crimean War was 
a gigantic mistake. One thinks of the enthu- 
siasm of the time ; the vague, deeply-rooted 
terror of the Russian advance ; the decision to 
support Turkey, however bad her government 
might be, and in spite of the fact that her 
war with Russia was caused by her refusal to 
accept terms which England herself had pro- 
nounced reasonable. One pictures the high 
hopes with which war was declared in March, 
1854 ; the enthusiasm with which some wel- 
comed the conflict, as divinely sent to prove 
the mettle of England after years of ignoble 
peace ; and then the mismanagement of the 
operations, the breakdown of the commissariat, 
the reception of the news day by day in 
London streets, the terrible winter of 1855-6, 

270 



In the Crimean Cemetery 

the feverish dispatching of necessaries and 
comforts for the troops, half-frozen in the 
trenches before Sebastopol ; and then, again, 
the successful " muddling through," the gradual 
triumph of the sea-power over the land-power; 
and the Peace, the Congress, the Treaty of 
Paris, the advantages for which England had 
striven so sternly that she had refused to 
make peace at the cost of losing a single one 
of them. And one recalls the result of it all. 
The sorry gains for which these seven thousand 
men laid down their lives were lost, with hardly 
a single exception, within a quarter of a century. 
They fought to prevent Russia from maintain- 
ing vessels of war in the Black Sea; Russia 
repudiated the restriction in 1870, and England 
had to content herself with a European Con- 
ference, which had nothing to do but to accept 
the inevitable. They fought to prevent Walla- 
chia and Moldavia from joining together into 
a powerful pro- Russian state ; the two provinces 
were formally united within five years, and be- 
came the kingdom of Roumania. They fought 
to set back the Russian frontier in Bessarabia ; 
it was advanced again to the same point in 
1878. They fought to prevent Russia from 
moving southwards towards the Persian Gulf ; 

271 



Turkey in Revolution 

by the Treaty of Berlin she acquired three new 
Asiatic provinces. 

It was not merely that they fought in vain ; 
they implanted more deeply than ever into the 
minds of many Englishmen the idea that Eng- 
land's main defence against the dreaded Empire 
of the North was to be found in supporting an 
inhuman despotism at Constantinople. The idea 
was so powerful that when, in 1875, European 
Turkey rose in revolt, England could not for- 
get the sacrifices which she had made to maintain 
the Ottoman Empire, and refused to join the 
other Powers in bringing force to bear upon 
the Porte to compel it to execute its promises 
of reform. The old obsession drowned even 
the indignation created among English capitalists 
by the bankruptcy of the Sultan's Government. 
When Turkey and Russia went to war, English 
feeling rose high ; ,£6,000,000 were voted for 
military expenses in a special session of Parlia- 
ment, and the British fleet was ordered to the 
Dardanelles to support Turkey. To prevent 
Russia from making her own terms after the 
war, Indian troops were ordered to the Mediter- 
ranean, and the reserves called out at home. 
On England's initiative, the Treaty of Berlin 
was substituted in 1878 for the terms of San 

272 



In the Crimean Cemetery 

Stefano. Macedonia, which would have formed 
part of a free Bulgarian state, was put back 
under the Turkish Government. In return for 
a definite though, of course, illusory guarantee 
of internal reform, and the more substantial 
advantage of occupying Cyprus, we made a 
separate agreement with the Porte which in- 
sured the inviolability of its Asiatic territories. 
Bulgaria, instead of being united and free, was 
separated into two provinces, as Roumania had 
been by the Treaty of Paris. Here we were 
disappointed, as before. Precisely the same 
experience was repeated at precisely the same 
interval of time. The union of Eastern Roumelia 
with Bulgaria was the last of the historic failures 
which dogged the steps of the old policy. 
Lord Salisbury expressed, with as much truth 
as frankness, the now obvious fact that we had 
"put our money on the wrong horse." 

But the baneful influence of our mistake con- 
tinued. The tradition of sympathy for the 
Turkish Government, irrespective of the condi- 
tion of its subjects, has from time to time 
retarded and weakened the efforts of English 
Ministers to secure order and justice in the 
lands for whose well-being our country had 
made herself responsible. It reinforced the 

273 s 



Turkey in Revolution 

nervous dread of humanitarian action which 
has always been a strong strain in English 
public opinion, and which at the end of the 
nineteenth century seemed to have increased 
rather than diminished. 

And the fear sometimes returns — above all 
among the memories of the Crimean Cemetery — 
whether the old mistake is going to be repeated. 
Are we committing ourselves to the support of 
Turkey from considerations of policy, European 
or Asiatic, rather than for disinterested reasons? 
Even though these reasons were the occasion 
for our change of front, are we going to forget 
them as time goes on, as the new game of 
world-politics absorbs our thoughts once more, 
with Turkey as one of the pawns? Are our 
eyes in the ends of the earth, turned towards 
the Moslems of India and Egypt rather than 
the peoples of Turkey ? Has Germany become 
our bugbear, instead of Russia? Is the story 
beginning all over again? 

It is not my purpose to discuss these ques- 
tions, still less to assert that no considerations 
of general policy ought to enter into our rela- 
tions with Turkey. Such a suggestion would 
be absurd as well as presumptuous ; but some 
thoughts upon those relations inevitably force 

274 



In the Crimean Cemetery 

themselves on the mind, and it seems in a 
high degree desirable, at the present moment, 
that we should fix our attention on the real 
and only justification for our changed attitude, 
It is my hope that this book may contribute 
to that end. No one can forecast the future 
with any confidence ; but the immediate past 
is certainly worth understanding and remember- 
ing. Here we have made no mistake. We 
have seen a sudden change in Turkey, unex- 
pected, beneficent, complete ; in full accord with 
the best traditions of our foreign policy, we 
have declared, promptly and effectively, our 
sympathy with the Turkish Revolution. The 
new Government in Turkey, so far as could be 
judged from its action when this book was 
written, is the antithesis of the old. The party 
now in power detests the former rulers as much 
as we did ourselves. The fact that England 
was the foremost opponent of the old regime is 
recognised as her strongest claim to the gratitude 
of the new. Our past enmity is the pledge of 
our present friendship. The efforts for reform 
in Macedonia made by Lord Lansdowne and 
Sir Edward Grey did not, as some expected 
them to do, make the Turkish people dislike 
us. On the contrary, the people seem to have 

275 



Turkey in Revolution 

appreciated, by a sort of instinct, that England 
was not really their foe. In spite of the fact 
that the meagre news they received had come 
to them through anti- English channels, they dis- 
tinguished, according to close observers, between 
disinterested opponents and interested friends. 
This power to see beneath the surface of diplo- 
macy has been remarked by onlookers as the 
sign of a distinct political aptitude. 

The Revolution has shown, what was not fully 
realised before, the strength of the hatred felt 
by the Turkish race itself for the Government 
of the Sultan. Not a single man was found 
ready to fight for it in its hour of need. The 
notion that the internal troubles of Turkey were 
caused by the Christians, or even by sympa- 
thetic but misguided foreigners, who would not 
leave those Christians to mind their own busi- 
ness, proves to have been a mistake. There 
is a general feeling among thinking Turks that 
England's policy of reform was fundamentally 
right. It is for this reason that the change in 
the official sympathies of Turkey — a change 
which has made England the most popular 
Power at Constantinople, and has even removed 
the deep-seated hostility to Russia, so long as 
Russia supports England's policy — is likely to 
be a permanent one. 

276 



In the Crimean Cemetery 

We have acquired through this change a 
new responsibility. Our influence with the 
Young Turks is strong. They consider us as 
a Liberal Power. They believe that their 
association with us will greatly encourage the 
constitutional movement in their own country. 
They are to some extent idealists ; they aspire 
to play a part in the world's progress. This 
aspiration it is in our power both to encourage 
and to guide. They value our support ; they 
should understand that it is conditional. They 
should know that we honour them because, 
and only because, they honestly mean to estab- 
lish public order and equality before the law 
for Christian and Moslem. They should know 
that we shall try to help them so long as they 
are working for justice, but no longer ; that 
this friendship of ours is no sentimental revival 
of an old alliance, no deep political game with 
ulterior ends in view. 

No Englishman need regret our present 
friendship for Turkey, unless, indeed, he was 
a genuine friend of the old regime, valuing the 
ancient and the picturesque so highly that he 
was ready to blind his eyes to human suffering. 
In that case, if new events have aroused a 
new sympathy, he must be content to change 

277 



Turkey in Revolution 

his mind and to accept all the consequences, 
however unpleasant to the aesthetic sense. But 
it is not for those who have supported Lord 
Lansdowne or Sir Edward Grey to change 
their minds. It is circumstances that have 
changed, not we. 

***** 

In supporting Young Turkey we may be 
doing a greater service than we think to the 
cause of European peace. Supposing that the 
reform of the Ottoman Empire proves to be 
real and permanent, the ever-open sore of the 
Near Eastern question will at last be healed. 
If we fix our eyes on Europe alone, almost 
all the hopes of territorial aggrandisement, and 
almost all the fears of a European war, which 
have haunted the minds of diplomatists since 
1870, have been based on the assumption that 
Turkey was a decadent empire. Turkey was, 
in a certain sense, the only thing left in Europe 
to fight about. It was taken for granted that 
the Sick Man would die, and the only question 
to be discussed was the question of who were 
to be his heirs, and what was to be the com- 
pensation for those who failed to obtain a 
legacy. It may be that this source of irrita- 

278 



In the Crimean Cemetery 

tion and danger is going to be removed. A 
reformed and stable Turkey would in certain 
circumstances make a settlement of the Balkan 
question possible without a war. Suppose that 
the Slavs within the Austrian Empire could 
find satisfaction for their hopes by the creation 
of an autonomous kingdom resembling Hungary. 
Suppose next that in course of time the four 
small States of the Balkans, whose nervousness 
has so often disturbed Europe, should link 
themselves together in an informal Balkan 
Alliance with Turkey as its centre. The old 
notion of such an alliance was that of a group 
of small States united by hostility to Turkey. 
It is possible that Turkey herself might now 
be included, and the alliance based upon the 
desire for peace. There are many jealousies 
to be appeased before it could be formed. 
But an entente between Turkey and Bulgaria 
would form a nucleus round which it might 
gather. Such an entente would be of immense 
value for Turkey ; there is a distinct similarity 
of character between the two races ; during the 
period of the Revolution, though their relations 
were strained by Bulgaria's drastic action, it 
was noticeable that very little bitterness was 
felt in Turkey towards her, and all the time 

279 



Turkey in Revolution 

there existed in Sofia a " Committee of Alliance" 
which aimed at promoting the friendship of the 
two countries. The conception of a Balkan 
Alliance is, of course, a very vague one, and 
the idea is disliked by Austria- H ungary, on the 
ground that its " point," as diplomatists say, 
would be directed against her. A similar argu- 
ment might be directed against any alliance 
that was ever formed. The natural timidity of 
small states, in a world which is tending towards 
large aggregations, is a sufficient justification for 
their combining together. It would give to the 
Balkan peoples that sense of security which 
they so sorely need. It is worth while specu- 
lating on possibilities such as these, because 
they would provide, if realised, a means of 
escaping from the "Armageddon" which so 
many have come to think inevitable, and 
which, in proportion as it is thought inevitable, 
becomes a real danger. 

The promise of this new dawn of liberty is 
manifold. The Young Turk policy includes the 
whole Empire in its scope. If it succeeds, the 
peoples of Turkey both in Europe and Asia 
will be relieved from an intolerable misery — 

280 



In the Crimean Cemetery 

from a political persecution whose ramifications 
of espionage, whose refinements of cruelty, 
whose crushing weight upon all intellectual 
effort, we are only now beginning to under- 
stand. Order will be restored over a great 
part of the earth's surface — from Albania to 
Kurdistan, from the Black Sea to the Indian 
Ocean. Crime will not go unpunished. The 
fear of violence and the certainty of extortion 
will be removed, and as the cloud rises, little 
by little, the peasant, Christian as well as 
Moslem, will begin to plough the lands which 
have lain fallow since the Roman Empire. 
Some of the Christian subjects of the Porte 
may dream of more drastic and far-reaching 
remedies than any reform of Turkish rule. 
But for others there are no such dreams. For 
Armenia in particular, this is the only chance. 

And if it does not succeed? Even so, the 
Revolution has achieved something which no 
disasters can wholly wipe out. If the men 
who broke up the old despotism, and let in 
the light and air upon dark places, were to be 
swept from power to-morrow by some con- 
spiracy of reaction, their work could not be 
forgotten. It would remain an example to the 
East and to the West. It would " live, and 

281 



Turkey in Revolution 

act, and serve the future hour." In the never- 
ending struggle of the human spirit for free- 
dom and self-expression, it stands out as one 
of the great blows, powerful, timely, and 
straight. 



THE END 



282 



INDEX 



Ahmed Riza, 118 
Albanians, 60 
Arabs, 213 
Armenia, 103 
Armenian Cemetery, 73 
Austria- Hungary, 53 

„ „ Annexation 

of Bosnia by, 224, 228, 

229, 335-337 



B 

Balkan Committee, 14, 158, 
159 

Bosnia, annexation of, 224 
Bulgaria, Oriental Railway 

seized by, 224 
Bulgaria, declaration of in- 
dependence by, 225-228, 
234 

Bulgars in Macedonia, 48 



Committee of Union and 
Progress, 14, 44, 88, 105, 
127-137, 189-194, 246-249 



Conference, European, 230 
Constantinople, scenery of, 

90, 94-96, 195-197 
Constantinople, order in, 104 
Constitution of 1876, 24 
„ Grant of, 66 
„ Rejoicings after 

grant of, 67, 70-73 
Constitution, revision of, 215 
Crete, proclamation of Union 

with Greece by, 225, 229, 

230 

Crimean Cemetery, 269 
, War, 270 



D 



Djavid Bey, 115 



Elections, 185-194 

England, Young Turk atti- 
tude towards, 147-149, 
199, 231-233, 276, 277 

Enver Bey, 56, 116, 117 

Equality, Young Turk idea 
of, 139-141, 251 



283 



Index 



European situation, effect of 
Turkish Revolution on, 
278-280 



Fehim Pasha, 106 
Ferid Pasha, 63 
Finance, 146, 147, 241, 262 
Foreign difficulties of Young 
Turkey, 217-237 



Grey, Sir Edward, 53 



H 

Hilmi Pasha, 122 



I 

Islam, liberal movement in, 

170-184, 266 
Ismail Mahir Pasha, 54 
Izzet Pasha, 106 



K 

Kalem, the, 215 

Khalif, 24, 162 

Kiamil Pasha, 66, 70, 121 



M 

Macedonia, 13, 33-40, 102, 

218-222 
Macedonian Reforms, 34 
Maniassi Zadi Refik Bey, 125 
Mechveret, the, 52 
Monastir, 38, 64 



N 

Nationalism, Young Turk 

idea of, 141-143 
Niazi Bey, 57 
Novi- Bazar, 53, 219 



O 



Liberty, what it means, 101- 
iii 



Ochrida, 36 
Osman Hidayet, 64 



Parliament, opening of, 195- 
205 

Parliament, composition of, 

207-208 
Parliament, working of, 208- 

215 

Pears, Mr. Edwin, 154 
Play, a revolutionary, 75-84 
Prospects of the new regime, 
257-267 



R 



Resna, 56 



284 



Index 



Revolution, origin of, 41-54, 
Robert College, 184 



S 

Saba-ed-Din, Prince, 194, 
212 

Said Pasha, 63, 69 
Salonika, 41 
Selamlik, 151-165 
Senate, 194, 215 
Sheikh-ul- Islam, 66, 167- 
179 

Shemshi Pasha, 61 
Spies, 27 

Sultan, 23, 152, 156-164 
Sultan's Government, 24- 
3i 



T 

Talaat Bey, 119 
U 

Ultimatum of Committee of 

Union and Progress, 65 
Union Liberate, 194, 212 

W 

Women, effect of the Re- 
volution on, 71, 72, 108, 
181, 245 

Y 

Yildiz Kiosk, 86, 164 
Young Turks, 15, 20, 49 
Young Turk policy, 139-149 



285 



Ube ©resbam press, 

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WOKING AND LONDON. 



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